Two More Arrested By Indian Cops In GainBitcoin Ponzi Case

The GainBitcoin Ponzi case has grabbed a lot of eyeballs in the Indian crypto sector as well as abroad. Recently, the Indian cops have made two fresh arrests in connection to the case. For those not familiar with the case, kingpin Amit Bharadwaj, whose brainchild was GainBitcoin, was arrested for one of the biggest scams in the country in the crypto sector. Massive returns were promised to investors on their investment in bitcoins but they were not delivered by the company. The final estimate of the money raised was around $300 million.

The duo that has been arrested were apparently responsible for marketing this ponzi scheme to thousands across the country. An unnamed official said:

“The duo were involved in marketing the scheme. They had lured hundreds of people and then disappear. We are investigating the case and are also finding out the number of people that have been duped,”

GainBitcoin started out back in 2015 as a multi-level-marketing scheme, where as mentioned above, investors were promised a return of 10% on their investment every month. They were scamming 100,000 investors on an average. Two First Information Reports (FIRs) were filed against the company in April 2018, and that is when the scam came to light.

Immediately after, another FIR was filed somewhere else and that indicated that it was happening in more than one city. The officials from the cyber crime cell in Pune looked into the case minutely and found out the wallets which were being controlled by Bhardwaj. Initially it held 5,372 BTC which number had now come down to 3.31 BTC. This was a clear sign that something was very off here.

These new arrests may help shed some light on how the scam was conceptualised and who all were involved.