Delhi Police Arrests Four Suspects for a $14.5 Million Cryptocurrency Scam

The world of crypto is full of Ponzi schemes, deceptive scams, and all sorts of illicit activities that you can imagine, which hurt innocent people. There are always some new ways that fraudsters would come up with to dupe people with no or very little knowledge of crypto trading and investing.

One such case was recently reported in the capital of India, New Delhi. Last Monday, the city crime branch has arrested a gang of crypto fraudsters that was involved in in a Rs 100 crore racket or $14.5 million. The reported gang was composed of four perpetrators, whereas Ashok Goyal Jaipuria is considered the mastermind of the group who apparently already has an infamous criminal history.

According to The Times of India, a leading news publisher in India, the city crime branch busted four crypto criminals who were duping unsuspecting people by falsely promising to give multi-fold returns on initial investments made in cryptocurrencies. Ashok Goyal Jaipuria, Asif Malpani, Baljit Singh Saini and Pradeep Arora were the four suspects arrested for stealing from people by pretending these were legitimate crypto investments. Their names have appeared in the charges of the $14.5 million fraud in which Ashok Goyal Jaipuria is claimed to be the key person and leader of the group.

Goyal and the group were promoting their cryptocurrency called Cashcoin, and luring in more victims by making profits for very few selective investors in the beginning. The police suspects they may have got some unregistered or non-recorded assets that he had taken from investors. The report also elaborates that a famous Bollywood actor was also somehow involved with the promotion of the fraud and is probably going to be questioned soon.

“The gang launched Cashcoin, a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin a year back, and initially showed profits to few investors and gained their confidence. They thus got more investors and duped them,” said crime branch unit XII senior inspector Sunil Jadhav. He further stated that the gang was hunting investors down with the false promise of double digits return.

One of the victims, Umeshchand Jain who lives in Surat, has see first hand how the group scammed from him the sum of Rs 1.2 crore (around $173,000). He said that the accused Goyal had been doing seminars across the country to attract gullible investors by promising them that the crypto in which they are investing would rise by an astronomical hike in its price, yielding greater returns.

As reported by the TOI, the group is charged and indicted for cheating, breach of trust, criminal conspiracy under Indian Penal Code and sections of IT Act. The alleged perpetrators may also get charged under the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act and Chit Funds Act as well.