A couple arrested on drug peddling charges has also been found to be running an illegal portfolio management service (PMS) handling nearly Rs 1,700 crore.
In June 2023, Moneycontrol had written about Ashesh and Shivangi Mehta's PMS operations that went by the name of Bliss Consultants, based on evidence from their website, app, and sources. It was around the same time that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the market regulator, had also started investigations into the couple's money-management business.
In an order dated April 24, 2025, the SEBI asked the couple to return the money collected from complainants / investors / clients as part of the illegal PMS operations, along with a simple interest of 12 percent per annum from the date of collection till the date of refund.
The regulator also fined Ashish Mehta Rs 10 lakh and Shivangi Mehta Rs 6 lakh, and restrained them from accessing the securities market for three years from the date of the order or the refund, whichever is later.
One of the defining features of the Mehtas' operations was that they were misleading investors by having them believe that their funds were automatically secured under a regulated investor protection fund. The couple did this by saying that the investors' funds would be managed through SEBI-registered brokers.
This was misleading because for investors to get any redress from SEBI, they need to be dealing with the relevant SEBI-registered entities, which in this case would be SEBI-registered PMSs. Bliss Consultants was not a SEBI-registered PMS.
SEBI started investigations into Bliss following complaints from investors. The complainants had stopped receiving their regular payouts from June 2023, when the Mehtas had a lookout notice issued against them following a Madhya Pradesh police-led investigation into a Rs 300-crore drug distribution network.
The regulator found that the couple had made presentations to potential investors and had onboarded them using a mobile app called Do It For Me Portfolio (DIFMP). It was an invite-based app and Bliss entered into an agreement with clients stating that their fee would be 30 percent of the profits.
During SEBI's investigation it was found that Bliss had a total credit of Rs 1,780.25 crore and a debit of Rs 1,676.85 crore, which included both investments made by clients and payouts of profits.
Impressive margins
When Moneycontrol was investigating Bliss' PMS operations, a source said that the service was advertised largely by word-of-mouth and there was big demand for it because of the extraordinary returns the couple was generating.
Despite not knowing the fund manager or the entity in charge of their money, people seem to have been eager to sign up for the service because it was delivering 2.5-3 percent returns every month. That is 36 percent per annum.
“Such returns were consistently delivered for years. There was not a single month in which he posted a loss, so clients were eager to sign up,” said the source.
SEBI's order also records the profits Bliss was generating, ranging from Rs 3.74 lakh to Rs 59.74 lakh between FY22 and FY24.
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