Investors tricked into major crypto fraud in India
Cryptocurrency has secured immense popularity worldwide. However, the increase in the popularity of crypto can not be interpreted as increased awareness of the same. India has been fascinated by the industry despite all the uncertainty in the regulations that continue to exist.
As its popularity grew, so did fraud and other fraudulent practices related to crypto. According to the Chainalysis report, in 2021, Indian users will have visited many fraudulent sites more than 9.6 million times. Chainalysis is a software platform that keeps track of the criminal activities that take place in the industry by tracking it.
Among the most visited crypto scam sites was adbtc.top, coinpayu.com, dualmine.com, hackertyper.net and coingain.app.
These five sites were specifically tagged as these sites alone accounted for nearly 4.6 million visits from Indian users. Recently, the Kerala police, together with other intelligence agencies, have discovered another massive crypto-investment fraud involving several kroner that went around in Kerala, the state of India.
Multi-Crore Crypto Scams in Kerala
The Kerala police, with the help of intelligence agencies, have found out about the details of the suspects related to the fraud with several kroner. The suspected group of fraudsters deceived investors by promising them high returns on investments.
These groups of suspects reached out to potential investors by telling them that they are associated with companies that are from the crypto industry.
After obtaining the funds, they directed the money via two companies that are supposedly based from Kochi. ‘Richferryman’ and ‘DealFX’ have reportedly defrauded investors.
After losing close to Rs 25 lakh ($ 31,000), an investor had reported to Perumbavoor police and filed a complaint. Only then did the police start investigating this and the whole scam appeared.
The police carried out a preliminary investigation and based on that, a case was registered against KK Vinod (53), living in Mudavoor, a city in Kerala.
Upon further investigation, it was discovered by the police that the above-mentioned fraudster along with his associates conducted these meetings in many places scattered throughout the state. In these meetings, they enticed investors to invest money, in return they promised very high returns.
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Scams close to 50 crores ($ 63 0000)
The police have further investigated the case and found that some investors even gave the accused gold jewelery. At the moment, the police are focused on obtaining details about ‘Richferryman’. This company was found to be registered in September 2021.
KK Vinod and Reji Vinod are the directors of the company. KK Vinod tried to demand a preliminary bail when he mentioned to the court that he was incorrectly implicated, but the session court has, however, rejected the claim.
An intelligence officer told The Indian Express,
Many attended these gatherings and invested lakhs. Preliminary details show that the accused had deceived many people in the Kottayam and Pathanamthitta districts. We confirm the total amount collected by the accused, which can reach around Rs 50 crore
Earlier this year, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided many locations in Kerala with other states and discovered a fraud worth Rs 1,200 ($ 1,513,428,000) referred to as Morris coin crypto fraud.
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Featured image from UnSplash, charts from TradingView.com
