Satish Kumbhani, the discredited creator of the cryptocurrency scam BitConnect, is still facing legal issues. Indian police have arrested him after learning that Kumbhani and others had defrauded the lawyer of close to BTC 220 (USD 5.2m) through a series of scams.
The Indian Express reports that the police in Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, have opened an investigation into an alleged cryptocurrency fraud and have already detained Kumbhani, who was previously charged in a US court with running a USD 2.4 billion-plus international Ponzi scheme and is currently under FBI investigation.
The founder of BitConnect and six other people are named in a First Information Report (FIR) that was filed in the case on Tuesday with the Pune City Police’s Cyber Police station, according to Forbes India.
According to The Indian Express, a FIR is a record that the police have created after confirming the details of the complaint.
In addition to the profits of BTC 166 that the complainant allegedly reinvested in the cryptocurrency scam platforms put up by the seven individuals from 2016 to 2021, the complainant asserts that he was scammed of BTC 54. The investigators are currently looking into whether the accused used the same techniques to con other people.
Kumbhani, who identified himself as the “Asian leader” of the scheme, was accused by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in February for allegedly deceiving investors around the world and robbing them of almost USD 2.4 billion. The con artist was accused of running a Ponzi scheme among other offenses, and the maximum possible sentence is 70 years in prison. Kumbhani has not been found by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States.
With great anticipation, BitConnect was introduced in February 2016 and benefited from the strongest bull market waves before it crashed in early 2018. It advertised itself as a platform for cryptocurrency lending that allowed users to exchange bitcoin for a native token called bitconnect coin (BCC), which offered substantial payments.
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