April 5,2018:

Amit Bhardwaj, a Bitcoin Entrepreneur who started his own bitcoin mining operations and duped more than 8,000 people to the tune of Rs 2,000 crores from across the country has been arrested from the Delhi Airport by Pune Police.

The move comes after Pune police had arrested seven persons associated with Bhardwaj and located him at Bangkok.

Delhi Police stated that Bhardwaj introduced the first online retail marketplace accepting bitcoin in the country in 2014. He owns a chain of bitcoin mining operations notable among them are Gain bitcoin- which claims to have set up bitcoin mining operations in China, GB Miners, located in Hong Kong and the recently launched, MCAP.

Pune Police Commissioner, Rashmi Shukla stated that, “Amit Bhardwaj was arrested from Delhi Airport today”.

Sources have said that Pune Police was tipped off by Bangkok Agencies pertaining to Bhardwaj’s location in the country.

Police further stated that Bhardwaj had set up an elaborate Multi-Level marketing scam by luring investors to hand him bitcoins in the promise of higher returns.

Under his scheme, investors were asked to invest one bitcoin for a ten per cent return. The contract would be valid for eighteen months. Bhardwaj also offered another option where he promised to facilitate bitcoin mining hardware to the investors, who may then mine their won bitcoins. However, he never gave the returns and instead fled the country, police said.

Four years after Bhardwaj had set up his bitcoin mining operations, the Enforcement Directorate (Mumbai) had issued a lookout notice for him after he fled the country.

Police stated that Bhardwaj had duped investors in Mumbai, Pune, Nanded, Kolhapur and other cities in the state. Three cases of Bitcoin MLM were registered in Pune, two in Nigdi and one in Dattawadi police stations.

In the case lodged at Nigdi police station, Bhimsen Baburam Aggarwal, a resident of Pradhikaran named six suspects including Amit Bhardwaj and Ajay Bhardwaj, both directors of Gain Bitcoin. Aggarwal had invested Rs one crore in Gain Bitcoin for 93.5 bitcoins.

Kislay Chaudhary, a Delhi based cyber expert who advises the Delhi Police on cybercrime said that Bhardwaj had set up his own mining servers thereby bypassing the transaction cost. “He did not have to pay the transaction costs. In many bitcoin frauds the accused deals in bitcoins. In this case, Bhardwaj went a step further and set up his own mining operations outside the country and came up with his own servers,” Kislay said.

 

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