Chandigarh: Despite all the uncertainty about the regulatory framework on cryptocurrency, the numbers of fraud cases have increased in India. Most of the cases involve Bitcoin. In a recent case, Chandigarh Police has arrested Amit Bharadwaj, Vivek Bharadwaj, Pankaj Adhlakha and Hemant Bhope in Bitcoin scam.
Chandigarh Police informed that a complaint has been lodged against Amit Bharadwaj, Vivek Bharadwaj, Pankaj Adhlakha and Hemant Bhope by three investors for duping around 15 crores. Police has arrested all the four accused after they received arrest warrants from Tihar Jail and they will be in Police custody for four days. Currently, Cybercrime cell is interrogating all the scammers.
As per the details given by an investor, the main accused Amit used to set the plot through lavish parties across various cities and thus attracting investors from these places. Then he used to invite them to attend Investor’s Summit in Dubai and Macau and even yachts were booked for them for several days.
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The three firms of Amit, Gain Bitcoin, GB Minors and GB 21, used to send the tickets and incur all the expenses. The investor also informed that investors not only from India but from countries like China, Dubai, Mauritius, Vietnam and several other countries also used to come.
He revealed, “When we started raising our voice for not getting the profit on our invested money in Bitcoin during the summits, Amit and his younger brother Aditya Bhardwaj assured us that our money would be returned but all in vain.”
Rashmi Yadav, DSP, Cybercrime cell informed that the statements of 16 investors have been recorded. These investors purchased 180 bitcoins in total from Amit. They also informed that every investor paid different prices for the bitcoin for example; one investor purchased a bitcoin for Rs 40,000 whereas the other one purchased it for Rs 1 lakh.
One thing which was same was the promise of return. Every investor was given assurance that they would get 10 per cent returns on their total investments for the period of 18 months. Another accused, Pankaj Adhlakha used to motivate and encourage the investors to invest their money in bitcoin.
A few of the investors got some returns in initial period on the backdrop of which they started believing that their money is safe.
As per the information revealed by the internal sources, Amit agreed to return principal investments of two of the investors in INR and refused to give return at the current bitcoin rate which is nearly Rs 2 lakh.
In recent time, the bitcoin scams have increased in India as last week only, Divyesh Darj was also arrested by Indian police. It is said that he is promoter of bitconnect kingpin and was involved in a Bitcoin scam worth $12.6 billion.
