The book-in for the highly publicized Indian crypto-scam has entered the charge sheet phase. Indian Police filed charge sheet against atleast four offenders for the fraud of 6 crore INR ($0.84 million).
The accused include Amit Bhardwaj, his brother, Vivek Bharadwaj, Pankaj Adlakha, and Hemant Bhope. According to a local media outlet, The Times of India, another chargesheet against two men alleged to have links with the above mentioned accused had been filed in the city of Delhi.
This case gained attention because of the involvement of a high-profile individual, Amit Bhardwaj.
Amit Bhardwaj is an Indian investor who is known as the founder/CEO of GB Miners, Amaze Mining and Research Limited from India. With a net worth of a staggering $1.4 billion, the entrepreneur was well faced in the local media stream.
As reported earlier, Amit Bhardwaj and his brother Pankaj Bhardwaj were arrested on April 4, accused of scamming $300 million from about 8,000 investors.
‘The victims were asked to invest one bitcoin for which they would get a 1% return. But the company never gave them the returns; instead they fled from the place’ — Police Report
Now, a chargesheet of more than 1,800 pages that includes 15 complainants and 27 witness report has been filed against the accused. The six crore figure has been rejected with claims of it being as high as 10 crore INR (around $1.4 million), with a High Court petition alleging that the scam funneled more than 40,000 crore ($5.6 billion).
At the time of their arrest last year, forensic investigations revealed that the bitcoin scam masterminds Amit Bharadwaj and Vivek Bharadwaj were in possession of 82,132 bitcoins and operated 84,617 user ids.
The megamind Amit Bhardwaj, a motivational speaker and author of three ironic e-books on cryptocurrencies may find himself locked away for a very long time. The hearing is set at December 4.
India, like other half-minded countries, has yet to decide the future of cryptocurrencies although they have limited adoption in mind. Works have already started to adopt cryptocurrencies in airline bookings and railways. The more, the merrier.
