Close to the heels of spate of frauds of duping investors through ponzi schemes involving cryptocurrencies, the Maharashtra government on Tuesday decided to conduct inquiry at centralised level by a panel headed by additional director general of Economic Offence (EO) Prabhat Kumar. The panel will be entitled to coordinate with central agencies including Enforcement Directorate (ED) for probe in such scams.
Minister of state for home Deepak Kesarkar told DNA, "Already such cases were reported in Thane, Pune, Nanded and Kolhapur where members of public have been allegedly cheated through cryptocurrency. The local police have registered cases. However, the panel will be empowered to inquire into such scams expeditiously. Prabhat Kumar will be authorised to include experts from finance, banking sectors and also representatives of district collectors."
He informed that the police have registered cases against the accused under various Indian Penal Code sections for cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and relevant provisions of the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act, the Chit Funds Act and the Information Technology Act.
The government's move comes four days after the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) circular banning banks from extending banking solutions to cryptocurrency entities came into effect. The apex court had already refused to grant an interim stay on the RBI circular.
The state home department officer said the people have been cautioned against the risk of virtual currencies.
The officer informed that Thane police in June had busted an online cryptocurrency racket, which had allegedly collected an estimated Rs 500 crore from people with the promise of good returns.
Some people had floated a company about a year back and launched their own cryptocurrency called the Money Trade Coin (MTC), through which they promised high returns and lured people to invest about Rs 500 crore into its schemes. The police have already arrested a mastermind.
Similarly, Nanded police is probing one of the cases in the bitcoin multi level marketing (MLM) scam in which around 8,000 people from across the country were reportedly duped.
In Pune, the police have registered four cases against the proprietor of a software company for duping several persons by investing their money in bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies and not returning their initial amount and sharing profits.
The Trigger
The government’s move comes four days after the RBI’s circular banning banks from extending banking solutions to cryptocurrency entities came into effect. Apex court had already refused to grant an interim stay on the RBI circular.
