Bitcoin fraud: Police custody of accused extended

CHANDIGARH: A distrcit court here extended the police custody of two men who were arrested from Delhi in a Rs 10-crore cheating case of Bitcoins.

Delhi residents

Sanchit

and Rajesh Kumar will be in police custody for another five days. Police said the two accused had direct links with the kingpin of the Bitcoin racket. They were involved in transferring Rs 30 lakh to the company account of the main accused, Amit Bharajwaj .

The duo allegedly developed a code language for transferring the money.

Public prosecutor Manjinder Singh pleaded to the police that he wanted to inquire if this was a Darknet company or agency involved with them for Bitcoin mining. It was also pleaded that the police wanted to recover the laptop of Sanchit, which is said to be in Haridwar. Also, a hand-written notebook regarding fraudulent transactions is to be recovered from Hanumangarh.

Also, police wanted to inquire the number of bank accounts that were opened for getting money from innocent people. The police said they also wanted to know the total money the accused had people cheated of and the number of people they had targeted.

Acting on a complaint by a former armyman, the cyber cell of Chandigarh Police had booked Amit Bhardwaj, owner of Gain Bitcoin, and other nine persons for duping him of around Rs 1.5 crore by luring him with handsome returns on investing in Bitcoin. Bhardwaj and his brother Vivek have allegedly duped around 8,000 persons to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore all over the country, police have claimed.

Both were earlier arrested by the police from Indira Gandhi Airport last year. The duo have been lodged in Pune jail since their arrest. As per police, the complainant stated that he met Bhardwaj thorough a Sector 49 resident in Dubai in 2016.

Complainant told that when he heard the news that Pune police arrested Bhardwaj and others for duping thousands of people, he checked his online account but his account was not showing a single bitcoin in his account. He then submitted a complaint to the cyber cell. Police said around 12 persons from Tricity have approached them in connection with the case.