India: Four Other Suspects Arrested in Alleged $14.5 Million Cryptocurrency Scam
Last month, a crime involving a counterfeit crypto investment scheme was exposed. It was a $14.5 million scam (100 Crore in Indian Rupees) carried out by the promotion of a bogus cryptocurrency called ‘Cash Coin’. As the investigation progresses, four more Indian men have been taken into police custody.
The crime branch of Mumbai, India has taken another counterfeit cryptocurrency-related investment scheme head on. In this scam of almost 1 billion rupees, Indian officials have taken four other male suspects into custody as reported on March 22 by The Times of India, an English language daily media outlet.
This report by the TOI also stated that the ‘kingpin’ of this alleged cryptocurrency crime has been tracked down and arrested.
Four more Arrests have been made in New Delhi
According to the report, individuals- Asif Malpani, Ashok Goyal Jaipuria, Pradeep Arora, and Baljit Singh Saini have been arrested by the Indian police officials from unit XII of the local crime branch from New Delhi, the capital of India. Apparently, the last arrests were made on Monday- March 18, 2019. $14.5 million (100 Crore in Indian Rupees) has been embezzled from quite a few local investors.
Several of the accused’s bank accounts have been reportedly frozen by the Police authorities, including the one of Goyal, who is supposedly the mastermind of this scheme.
An anonymous Bollywood actor, who apparently had participated in promotional events for the Cash Coin and may have seemingly been involved, will also be questioned by the officials.
Four other suspects were Arrested Last Month
Individuals- Sanjay Sontakke, Rajnikant Kumawat, Kirankumar Panchsara, and Alpesh Barodia were arrested by the Police Authorities in regard to this case, last month. Allegedly involved in the promotion of this very cryptocurrency scam, they were taken into custody from several Indian Cities including Uttar Pradesh, Surat, and Mumbai in February, but Goyal was not arrested until recently.
A complaint filed in Surat, a city in the Indian state of Gujarat, by an individual stating to have been robbed by Cash Coin was the one that led to the disclosing of this scam.
Umeshchand Jain, one of the victims reported that he has been defrauded of almost $1.7 million (12 Crore in Indian Rupees) after being lured into the fake crypto scheme. According to Jain, promotional seminars were arranged all over India to attract more customers. During these activities, local investors were targeted into putting their money into the doubtful cryptocurrency business.
Significant Returns were promised on the original Investment by the Company, as is promised by other investment scams in regards to their promotion. In this crypto-related investment plan, victims were asked to put a relatively small amount of their money into the company for an almost double amount of profits.
A senior inspector at crime branch unit XII, Sunil Jadhav, gave his remarks on the matter, saying:
‘A cryptocurrency akin to Bitcoin, Cash Coin, was launched almost a year back by the gang. In order to gain the confidence of their few investors, profits were shown to them at first and later on, as more investors started coming in, they began cheating them.’
According to the reports by the local news outlets, a felony involving ‘breach of trust, criminal conspiracy under Indian Penal Code and sections of Information Technology Act’ has been registered by the crime branch of India.
In the first weeks of January, another individual of a different group accused of carrying out a cryptocurrency scam of almost $71.6 million (5 billion Indian rupees) was arrested by the Indian Police.
