The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has barred Bollywood actor Arshad Warsi, his wife Maria Goretti Warsi, and 57 other individuals from accessing the Indian equity markets for up to five years in connection with a major stock manipulation scam involving Sadhna Broadcast Ltd (SBL).
Sadhna Broadcast, which changed its name to Crystal Business System on May 23, 2025, became the center of a “pump-and-dump” scheme, where promoters artificially inflated the company’s share price through coordinated internal trading. These trades, though often small in volume, had an outsized impact on the stock price due to low liquidity, enabling manipulators to boost the share price with minimal investment.
The second phase of the scam involved aggressively promoting the stock to retail investors through misleading videos on several YouTube channels, such as Moneywise, The Advisor, and Profit Yatra. These channels, operated by Manish Mishra, falsely portrayed SBL as a lucrative investment, claiming, among other things, fake deals with the Adani Group and a ₹1100 crore contract with a large American corporation. SEBI confirmed these claims were fabricated to manipulate the stock price.
Between March and December 2022, promoter shareholding in SBL fell from 40.95% to 25.58%, while the number of public shareholders surged from 885 to over 72,000, raising public ownership from 59.05% to 74.52%.
Arshad Warsi’s involvement came to light when, on July 13, 2022, he bought 1.87 lakh shares of Sadhna Broadcast from Jatin Shah, an associate linked to the manipulation. His wife Maria Goretti also bought 2.65 lakh shares the same day. Despite Warsi’s claim that he acted on a friend’s tip without knowledge of any wrongdoing, SEBI rejected this defense, citing WhatsApp chats indicating his active role in the scheme.
SEBI revealed that Arshad Warsi earned a profit of ₹41.70 lakh and Maria Goretti earned ₹50.35 lakh from the manipulation. Both have been barred from trading in the securities market for one year. Additionally, SEBI has ordered 59 entities involved in the scam to disgorge unlawful gains amounting to ₹58.01 crore with 12% annual interest, to be paid jointly and severally from the end of the investigation period until actual payment.
