Lokmanyu Chaturvedi, an international e-sports professional has filed a police complaint of cheating and fraud against Sports Front – a company engaged in creating unique sporting intellectual properties (IPs), organising standout events, and providing top-tier sports activation and talent management.
According to the complaint filed at New Delhi's Police station Kotla Mubarakpur, complainant Lokmanyu was engaged by Sports Front to create tournament planning, execution strategy for “Legend Faceoff” game, which is a live football match.
The investigating officer Nitesh Kumar said that he is yet to go through the complaint.
”I will update when I see the complaint,” he said.
Chaturvedi has alleged company and directors of cheating saying that accused persons have caused him significant financial damage of Rs 10 lakh while severely damaging his professional relationships with content creators who were engaged based on false assurances.
“Tushar Singh, who heads alliances and communication for Sports Front approached me to seek my services. After initial discussion the company sent me draft MoU for officially engaging me. Since few terms and conditions did not suit me, I sent them the draft MoU back with my observations and conditions. The company agreed on my conditions verbally and offered to send contract letter directly bypassing the need to sign up MoU citing paucity of time,” said Lokmanyu Chaturvedi.
Chaturvedi, later sent them fees bill of Rs 2 lakh plus taxes before embarking on the project. He had detailed discussion about the payment of fees with Ankur Kumar, who is CMO of Sports Front. Kumar agreed to pay the fee and told Chaturvedi to start work with an assurance of paying up soon.
Kumar even created official email id of Chaturvedi on company's domain name (lokmanyu@thesportsfront.com) to give Chaturvedi comfort for his assignment.
“Soon after I started exchanging work related progress on whatsapp with Ankur Kumar (CMO, TSF), Tushar Singh Rathore (Chief of Alliance and Communication,TSF) and John Zaidi (CEO, TSF). I roped in influencers and other associates using my goodwill on assurance of payment of fees,” Chaturvedi said.
The company later ceased all communication abruptly with an intention to defraud Chaturvedi with Rs 2 lakh as confirmed verbally to him. So much so that, the company didn't take note of even legal notice sent by Chaturvedi regarding payment of promised fees.
“When the company ceased all communication, I have approached police to resolve my issue and take action against them for making false promise, defrauding and cheating,” Chaturvedi said.
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