The allegation that one of China’s most popular online investment platforms was a Ponzi scheme has sparked a nationwide “rights protection” movement, with jilted investors calling for three days of protests.

Ezubao raised more than Rmb50bn ($7.6bn) from almost a million investors in little over a year before Ding Ning, the site’s 34-year-old founder, was accused by the official Xinhua news agency this week of running an elaborate fraud.

Police first swooped on Ezubao’s offices in December, but the accusation has energised the company’s panicked investors, many of whom handed over their savings to the peer-to-peer lender because of an advertising campaign that they said implied the company had government backing. The company promised to connect savers with investment projects willing to pay high rates of interest, but according to Xinhua many of the projects were fake.