india

Updated: Aug 06, 2019 22:44 IST

The Special Task Force (STF) of Madhya Pradesh police said on Tuesday that they have busted a gang that had duped about 1,500 people in 22 countries of at least Rs 100 crore by creating fake cryptocurrency and an exchange for trading it.

“Till now, four members of the gang have been arrested,” said Purshottam Sharma, special director general of the STF after interrogators had grilled Harpreet Singh Sahni, one of the founders of the crypto-currency exchange following his arrest from a hotel in New Delhi on Friday, hours before he was scheduled to take a flight to Dubai.

Sharma said Sahni was born in Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh and had shifted to Australia several years ago. He used to run a security agency in Australia and was planning to start a business in Maharashtra from the money he amassed by duping people, the officer said.

The police officer said Sahni and others started a cryptocurrency company sometime in 2018, floated a fake bitcoin trading exchange and appointed agents in different countries to lure investors.

“They appointed a Malaysian named as Mel Davidson as head of the company and used to pay him $ 3,000 as salary per month,” said STF additional director general of police Ashok Awasthi, adding that promotional events were also held in several countries to attract investors.

Awasthi said the attraction for investors was their bitcoin exchange, developed by a Bangalore-based software company, which offered higher monetary benefit then other exchanges where the rates were going down.

“When the market was going down in 2018 and early 2019, the fake exchange was showing high growth to fool people and that’s why many people got trapped,” Sharma added.

Police said they have retrieved data of 1,500 people from the server installed in company’s office in Jaipur. “The investors were from 22 countries including USA, UK, Australia, Switzerland, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Poland, Russia, Singapore. The fraud detected so far is of at least Rs 100 crore,” Sharma said.

The STF got first break on June 25 when they arrested a couple from Jabalpur, Brijesh Raikwar and Seema Raikwar and another person identified as Rupesh Rai, who they described as agents of the company floated by Sahni. Police said Sahni had agents in different countries to lure gullible investors.

A case had been registered on a complaint filed by one Rajeev Sharma in November 2018. Sharma who lives in Australia, told the Madhya Pradesh Police that some persons in the state have duped him in cryptocurrency business. Shortly after Sharma’s complaint, 25 other investors in Madhya Pradesh lodged their complaints with the police, which asked the STF to investigate.

Bhopal-based cybercrime expert, Mahesh Shrivastava, said, “By creating fake cryptocurrency trading platforms, fraudsters have duped so many people across the world. To me, 90 out of 100 crypto-currencies are fake, and people should be made aware about it.”