New Delhi: Two people were arrested from Surat by the Rajkot crime branch of Gujarat on Saturday after allegedly duping 17 people of Rs 38 lakh by floating a ponzi scheme involving cryptocurrency. The mastermind of the ponzi scheme was based in Dubai, the police reported.
The accused have been identified as Brijesh Gadiyali and Kiran Panchasara are the residents of Surat. The other two criminals namely Dhaval Laheri and Hitesh Gupta have still not been captured.
The police reported that the four accused had floated the ponzi scheme in September 2020 and lured people into investing in cryptocurrency.
Reportedly, the criminals created a portal ‘cybertron.live’, and made people sign contracts. They asked the victims to invest in Tron, a digital currency, and told them that in exchange they would pay them a 2% return per day in their digital wallet. This would enable the investment to triple in 150 days. Besides, they asked the investors to find people who would be interested to triple their investment instantly and get and an additional 10% commission.
Reportedly, 17 people invested Rs 52.20 lakh into the scheme over the period and got Rs 13.90 lakh in return through bank transfers, cash, and angadiya.
“Early this year, the accused held a mega-show in Udaipur, Rajasthan, and launched their own cryptocurrency Megatron and promised investors that the market value of both Tron and Megatron would remain same. They converted all Tron cryptocurrency into the Megatron and on the very next day, the value of the Megatron fell to Rs 00.001,” stated Rajkot crime branch police inspector VK Gandhi. Around Rs 38 lakh of investors were washed out overnight.
