The saga of Bitconnect, a major cryptocurrency scam scheme, is taking another turn as one of the Bitconnect co-founders is now wanted by the Indian state police.
The Indian Express reported on Wednesday that Satish Kumbhani, an Indian national and the alleged founder of the crypto Ponzi scheme Bitconnect, has reportedly been subjected to a new police investigation in India.
The Pune Police, working under the Indian state of Maharashtra Police, launched an investigation into Kumbhani after a Pune-based lawyer filed a complaint claiming he lost around 220 bitcoins (BTC), or $5.2 million, due to Bitconnect. . The complainant stated that his original investment was 54 BTC, with a return of 166 BTC, which he allegedly used to reinvest in the platform.
The claimant mentioned that the transaction between him and the suspects took place between 2016 and June 2021, pointing to six more people allegedly involved in the scam along with Kumbhani. No arrests have been made in the case, the report notes.
Bitconnect is one of the largest scam schemes in the history of crypto, with Ponzi orchestrators allegedly defrauding misguided investors of nearly $2.4 billion. Launched in February 2016, Bitconnect operated a platform and a digital currency, which shut down in January 2018, with the founders eventually missing out on investors’ money.
Despite Bitconnect shutting down operations years ago, the Bitconnect case has seen a lot of action recently, with the Justice Department charging Kumbhani of orchestrating the Bitconnect scam scheme in February 2022.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later stated that the authority was unable to locate the missing Bitconnect co-founder. In a court filing in late February, the SEC noted that Kumbhani’s last known location was in his native India.
related: Dutch authorities arrest suspected Tornado Cash developer
BitConnect isn’t the only cryptocurrency whose main arranger is currently missing. Global prosecutors and officials are also investigating scams such as OneCoin, a $4 billion Ponzi scheme that stopped working in late 2019.
Ruja Ignatova, the Bulgarian-German creator of OneCoin, was included in the ten most wanted list by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in June 2022. Ignatova, widely known in the crypto community as “Cryptoquine”, was last seen in 2017.
