Does GainBitcoin scam involve Rs1 trillion?

Mumbai: As of now, a total number of bitcoins collected by Amit Bhardwaj, the prime accused into the biggest ever crypto ponzy scam of the country, who died of cardiac arrest earlier this year, may range anywhere between 38,500 to 600k and the amount involved stands at Rs90,000 crore.

Bhardwaj was arrested in March 2018 and remained in Pune Police custody. However, he was released after getting bail from Supreme Court in April 2019.

However, experts believe that the scam may go beyond Rs1,00,000 crore or more in future. Over 60,000 user IDs and email addresses traced by the Pune Police into the case, show that at least 1 lakh people are victims of the scam and they are spread across the country.

Talking to Bizz Buzz, Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner said: "We have already filed chargesheet against all the accused and investigations are still on into the case."

With a total of 40 FIRs registered by victims in Maharashtra and Punjab alone, a large number of people from other States may lost their savings in the GainBitcoin Scam.

Gaurav Mehta, a Blockchain Forensic expert, says: "The investigation into the scam began as early as in 2018. However, the problem was the police didn't have expertise into cryptocurrency related scam. Also, there was a lack of will power in absence of expertise."

The second most important problem was that the 40 FIRs that had been filed into the case were at different police stations across the country and due to lack of co-ordination the information flow was getting disrupted. Moreover, it was difficult to know which department should carry the probe as the matter related to various enforcement agencies like ED (Cyber Cell, EoW and Serious Fraud Investigation office), he said.

Yet another intriguing thing was the involvement of senior police officers into the case which was making it difficult to conduct the probe. However, the proper probe began in 2019.

Two more cyber experts have been nabbed by the Pune city police for their alleged involvement in a multi-crore cryptocurrency in March. The story was carried by Bizz Buzz on March 15 edition. The current case has its root in the earlier scam.

The accused have been identified as Pankaj Prakash Ghode (38), a resident of Tadiwala Road, and Ravindranath Prabhakar Patil (45), who is a resident of Bhiwandi. Interestingly, one of the accused, Patil, is a former IPS officer of 2005 batch. However, he had quit police service after working for a few years.

Interestingly, the services of the two experts, who are in police custody now, had been sought by the police for probing a cryptocurrency fraud which was unearthed way back in 2018.

Total number of victims in the GainBitcoin scam stands at more than one lakh, while more than 3,85,000 Bitcoins were collected under Amit Bhardwaj as part of various schemes.

Taking the current bitcoin price of around Rs23,57,250 apiece, the total amount comes to around Rs90,500 crore. Interestingly, GainBitcoin also had a pyramid structure, with Bhardwaj at the top followed by his 'Seven Stars' who used to operate in India and abroad. The other persons were below the Seven Stars in the pyramid.

Surprisingly, Manu Sharma, Pankaj Adlakha, Amit Yadav, Sanjay Dua, late Surinder Singh Alagh, Naveen Pathak and Gautam Khanna were counted as the Seven Stars of the Ponzi scheme. Most of these Seven Stars have been absconding and have not appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) yet.

Amit Bhardwaj used to collect fund from the investors through a host of sites some of which include GBminers and Bitcoin Growth Fund, which showed the collection of 2,25,839 Bitcoins.

However, there remain at least 6-7 wallets untraced, including the wallets of other Seven Star members that were used for collection purposes and hard wallets that were primarily used to hold cryptocurrencies.

Pune Police and the ED suspect that Ajay Bhardwaj, the brother of Amit Bharadwaj, being the director of most of the companies was equally involved in the scam.