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…
