The police in New Delhi, in India, announced this weekend that two citizens were arrested for handling a fraudulent investment scheme in bitcoin. The defendants operated from 2016 and until now it is known that they obtained between 250 and 300 bitcoins.
Identified as Deepak Jangra and Deepak Malhotra, aged 37 and 56 respectively, the researchers managed to cheat more than 5,000 people by offering them investments in bitcoin with a monthly return of 12%. According to the Cyber Cell Police explained to local newspapers, the duo of "enthusiasts" of cryptocurrencies offered the purchase of bitcoins to the citizens of India, cryptocurrencies that they obtained from a company in the United States.
However, the business scheme promised by Jangra and Malhortra was not fulfilled. People made monthly payments or "investments" and received "additional income for including new people as referrals". But surpassed the 5,000 investors, the payments in bitcoins by the investment stopped arriving, and in a matter of weeks the affected ones went to the authorities so that an investigation began.
The investigation showed that payments and returns were initially made in bitcoin, but then Jangra, who established an office in Netaji Subhash Place in Delhi, announced that the returns would be made in a cryptocurrency created by them called "BMP", a digital asset that is lacking of verifiable quotation: "his idea was basically to launch a multilevel marketing scheme that involves bitcoins," said a Cyber Cell police officer, where the detainees reside.
The fraud, said Jangra in the interrogation, was based on the idea of gainbitcoin.com, whose founder, Amit Bhardwaj, was arrested for being part of a criminal organization. He added that in the intention of the "multilevel scheme", which has characteristics of a ponzi pyramid, it was contemplated that the change from bitcoin to BMP, but "the increase in debt and the daily pressure of its investors made it flee with money "
This type of events hits the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies in India, as it negatively affects the vision of regulatory authorities on digital currencies; vision that for more than two years is unfavorable. Above all, considering that currently the exchange houses seek to appeal the decision of the central bank to prohibit banking institutions from processing transactions related to the cryptoactives. A measure aligned with the intention to eradicate all forms of trade with cryptocurrencies in India.