India’s financial crime investigation agency Enforcement Directorate (ED) has sought the help of police in a case of bitcoin theft worth Rs. 6 crores ($790,000) by the investigators who were assisting the police in a crypto fraud case worth over $260 million.
What Is the Case?
As per media reports, ED officials visited the office of Pune’s Commissioner of Police in the Maharashtra province last Saturday and collected some information about the crime.
The case pertains to two private cryptocurrency detectives allegedly transferring 1,137 bitcoins while investigating a fraud where they were assisting the Pune police. CryptoPotato earlier reported the arrest of Pankaj Ghode, a cryptocurrency expert, and Ravindra Patil, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who had taken voluntary retirement and was working as a private digital asset investigation expert.
The case in which Ghode and Patil were assisting the police relates to a cryptocurrency scam registered in 2018 involving 87,000 bitcoins and at least 8,000 investors. According to the ED’s estimates, these bitcoins at the current market rate would be worth Rs. 20,000 crore ($262.3 million).
CryptoPotato reported this case as well, where the key accused, Amit Bhardwaj, was charged by the ED with running a multilevel marketing (MLM) scheme called GainBitcoin. According to the scheme, GainBitcoin was to offer a 10% monthly return on bitcoin investments.
