I am a retired resident of New Delhi, who opened an online share trading account with CD Equisearch (www.cdequisearch.com/) in Oct 2010, depositing a margin money of Rs 3 lakhs. However as I went out of station I did not use my trading account. The money remained deposited.
However recently after return from abroad, I contacted Cd Equisearch on September 2011, and I was told that the there is no margin money balance in my account and there were only a few stocks worth only Rs 14000 in the ledger. I was baffled and wanted CD Equisearch to explain how can this happen when there was no trade from my side in the last one year.
On further inquiry and after lodging an official complaint one of their VPs met me in my home on the 26th September, and apologetically informed that one of the CD Equisearch employees including one of their general managers had connived and managed to hack my ID and password in collusion with their IT service team and have been trading with my user ID and deposit money.
I therefore asked him if In the process CD Equisearch gained in terms of brokerage charges for each deal, The employees have thus done this fraud to earn incentives from their company and thus there were mutual benefits. They informed that though this was true but keeping in view of their firm's reputation they will take action on the employees and will revert.
However to date there has been no further news from the company regarding the action taken. I have been constantly complaining to their online site, but no action has been taken.
How can an online share trading companies like CD Equisearch allow such practices by their employees in collousion to take place and why have there been no checks and balances from SEBI? Other online share trading companies like ICICI Direct, Standard Chartered etc make it mandatory for the subscriber to periodically change the user ID and Password to prevent such fraud 9 once a fortnight). The account is automatically locked if there be any such attempts to fraud. Why was this was not done by CD Equisearch?
How was CD Equisearch exmpted from following SEBI Guidelines that they could allow such fraudulent practice to be continued for nearly one year by their employee? It appears that CD Equisearch encouraged such practices since it allowed them to increase their earnings from brokerage cgarges at times of depressed stock markets.Where was SEBI?
Finally since I have lost such a considerable sum of money what is the way one can take action on CD Equisearch so that they can compensate me for this loss which is entirely due to their irresponsible management? Can some one advise what is the recourse I have to get justice!
