India’s anti-white laundering of money laundering said it seized approx. 16.5 billion rupees ($ 190 million) of crypto, some cash and a Lexus car during studies of the collapse of the Bitconnect Cryptocurrency-fraud.
Bitconnect, founded in 2016 by Satish Kumbhani, raised billions of dollars from investors for a protocol allegedly paid 10% in interest earnings. The Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2018, and by 2023 a California judge ordered $ 17 million in the refund to be paid to the victims.
Kumbhani, an Indian citizen, was indicted in the United States and is in demand in India.
The company’s claims of investing the money “were a fraud as the defendant knew that BitConnect did not deploy investor funds for trading in his alleged trade bot rather, the siphoned investors’ funds to their own advantage and their association benefit by transferring these funds to digital wallet addresses Checked by them, “the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) said in a Saturday statement.
A “complex web of transactions” through “Several crypto -cartoon books” was used to hide the identity of the wallets’ owners.
“However, by tracking several web drawing books and collecting soil information, ED was able to zero-i-on-the-wallets and the premises where the digital devices containing the said cryptocurrencies were available,” it said.
