UPDATE (March 1, 19:50 UTC): Corrects headline and first paragraph to say that Satish Kumbhani was indicted, not convicted, regarding a Ponzi scheme.
BitConnect founder Satish Kumbhani is nowhere to be found a week after being indicted in the $2.4 billion Ponzi scheme that is said to have defrauded investors in the U.S.
Kumbhani, an Indian citizen, was charged criminally by the U.S. Department of Justice last week. The Securities and Exchange Commission separately sued Kumbhani in September 2021, claiming he fraudulently raised more than $2 billion for BitConnect.
The problem now? No one knows where Kumbhani is.
Officials said in a legal filing on Monday that Kumbhani has likely vanished from India and his whereabouts remain unknown. This follows from an October 2021 filing that said the SEC learned Kumbhani has likely relocated from India to an unknown address in a different country.
“The Commission did not know the whereabouts of Kumbhani, an Indian citizen, at the time it filed this action, and BitConnect is an unincorporated entity the Commission must serve through its manager, Kumbhani,” said senior trial counsel Richard G. Primoff in the filing.
“Since November, the Commission has been consulting with that country’s financial regulatory authorities in an attempt to locate Kumbhani’s address,” Primoff added. “At present, however, Kumbhani’s location remains unknown, and the Commission remains unable to state when its efforts to locate him will be…
