Three Arrested for Allegedly Cheating Nagpur Businessman of Rs. 10 Lakh in Crypto Scam

Three persons were booked for allegedly cheating a businessman of Rs 10 lakh in Nagpur by promising high returns on investment in cryptocurrency, a police official said on Monday.

Victim Rukesh Waikar (37) invested Rs 10 lakh in October and filed a complaint after the accused, identified as Kiran Bhalerao, Mahesh Kumar Dadwadi and Sumit Boria, failed to fulfil their promise, the Wadi police station official said.

The accused have been booked for cheating and other offences under Indian Penal Code and further probe was underway, he added. 

Despite repeated reminders from experts from the crypto community as well as from national and international law enforcement agencies — the number of scam cases around crypto assets have seemingly increased in number.

Just earlier this month, the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha arrested the Country Head of 'Yes World Crypto Token', namely Sandeep Choudhary (40), from Jaipur. The arrest was made after the police found that Yes World was a huge Ponzi scheme that may have affected thousands of people. 

A Special Investigation Team (SIT), meanwhile, is also conducting searches in different parts of Himachal Pradesh to unearth a long running crypto scam. The SIT investigations have revealed that at least one lakh people have been duped in the fraud, and 2.5 lakh IDs have been found, including multiple IDs of the same person.

Back in October, the Navi Mumbai cyber police froze several bank accounts involving amounts worth Rs 32.66 crore. 

In light of these back-to-back cases, police have cautioned the general public to remain vigilant and exercise caution on such investment schemes, particularly in the cryptocurrency space.