Vivek Bhardwaj, the brother of Amit Bhardwaj, who all allegedly the mastermind behind one of India’s biggest Bitcoin fraud has been taken into custody by Delhi Police for questioning. Amit ran a Ponzi scheme spanned across multiple states in the country and managed to dupe almost 2,000 innocent investors to the tune of 80,000 Bitcoins.
Amit himself was arrested from Bankok in April after multiple cases of fraud and cheating were registered against him in different parts of the country. ED (Enforcement Directorate), the agency responsible for enforcing economic and financial regulations and fight economic offenses in India is leading the case.
On Thursday, Vivek Bhardwaj was taken into the custody and quetioned at the Prashant Vihar police by Delhi Police. The Bhardwaj brothers are residents of Shahipur village in Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh. The duo is the founders and CEOs of Gain Bitcoin, GB Minors, and GB21 firms and along with accomplices have allegedly cheated investors by not delivering their promised share of bitcoin.
Bhardwaj enticed Indian investors by luring them into buying bitcoins and investing them in an 18-month plan that promised a 10% monthly returns, payout in bitcoin. Lucrative incentives were further promised if investors lured more members into the scheme.
Bhardwaj and his hired agents claimed that the company could afford the high-interest pay-outs as they are running profitable Bitcoin mining operations under the banner of GbMiners. To entice and invite more investors the company did offer the monthly interest for the first few months.
Read more: Amit Bhardwaj Threw Lavish Parties To Lure Investors Into His Bitcoin Scam
In May 2017, the company stopped paying out its customers in bitcoins and instead started paying them in a cryptocurrency called MCAP, which was launched by Amit Bhardwaj himself.
The latest fraud case was registered by the software development firm, T R Mittal, and two others, who claim that Amit promised them a Dubai trip and took them to two meetings at five-star hotels in Delhi. During the ‘meeting’, they were introduced to a referral scheme. Mittal and his colleagues approached police when the promised bitcoin wasn’t transferred.
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