Market Regulator SEBI has stopped Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi, his wife Maria Goreti, and 57 other institutions from securities markets for one to five years for one to five years in cases related to misleading videos on YouTube channels for one to five years, recommending investors to buy shares of practice broadcasting.
The regulator imposed a fine of ₹ 5 lakh on Mr. Warsi and Ms. Goreti. According to an order passed by SEBI on Thursday (May 29, 2025), the couple was restrained by the guards from the security market for 1 year.
SEBI has also imposed a fine from ₹ 5 lakh to 5 crore on 57 other institutions, including promoters of Sadhana Broadcasting (now Crystal Business System Limited).
In addition to debrament, SEBI directed these 59 institutions to jointly and terminate the total illegal profit jointly with 12% interest with ₹ 58.01 crore from the end of the actual payment from the end of the investigation period to the actual payment.
SEBI said that Arshad had made a profit of ₹ 41.70 lakh and his wife had made a profit of ₹ 50.35 lakh.
In the final order, SEBI found that the masterminds behind this entire operation were Gaurav Gupta, Rakesh Kumar Gupta and Manish Mishra. Subhash Aggarwal, who also as Director of RTA of Sadhana Broadcast Limited (SBL), worked as going to Manish Mishra and promoters, stated in the order.
These people were central characters who planned and carried out the manipulation scheme, SEBI said.
In addition, the regulator noticed that Piyush Aggarwal and Lokesh Shah facilitated the accounts used for the addition of promoters of Manish Mishra and SBL to the accounts used to be used for them.
Earlier a dealer was liked and later owned by Stockbroker’s Delhi franchise. Both of them were important cogs who provided large -scale manipulation in the scrip.
Similarly, Jatin Shah played a major role in operating the scheme, while other institutions provided manipulation design facilities or to make a quick deer, the order said.
According to the 109-Page order, SEBI said that the notice (institutions) have worked as an information carrier or helped to keep the manipulations trades, but have not traded the scrips with their own accounts.
SEBI said that the structured plan has been executed in two coordinated stages. In the first phase, connected and promoter-linked institutions executed trades among themselves to continuously increase the price of scrip and make a false presence of market interest.
These trades often had an uneven effect on the price due to small low liquidity in volumes, allowing criminals to push the scrip upwards with a relatively minimal trading outlay.
In the second phase of the scheme, misleading and promotional videos were spread in YouTube channels such as Money’s, Advisor and Benefit Travel, which are all run by Manish Mishra.
These videos presented SBL as a promising investment opportunity and timelly timelled to match and enhance with artificial market activity.
SEBI’s entire-time member Ashwani Bhatia said in the order, “The overall conduct of notices has revealed a classic pump-end-dump scheme. The price was systematically pushed upwards through trading, followed by a coordinated sales-off,” to the promotional activity, and finally, a coordinated sales-off, “.
Accordingly, these 59 institutions violated the provisions of PFUTP (prohibition of fraud and inappropriate trade practices) rules.
In addition, SEBI said that no monetary penalty is being imposed on a promoter unit Varun Media Private Limited due to pending insolvency proceedings. However, the direction for hatred will remain in force and the action against the company will be decided through a separate order.
The order received complaints during the period of July-September 2022 to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), alleging that the scrippe of television channel SBL had a price manipulation in the price and later shares.
Complaints alleged that Youtube video was uploaded to woo misleading investors with false content about the company.
Subsequently, SEBI conducted a detailed investigation into the alleged manipulation in the SBL scrip for the period from March 8, 2022 to 30 November, 2022.
SEBI said an interim order was passed by the regulator on March 2, 2023 against 31 institutions including SBL promoters.
Published – May 30, 2025 12:10 pm IST
