Event management firm Co-Founder arrested in AED 3 billion Bitcoin Scam

The accused propagated and promoted the said scam by conducting seminars in Dubai and for that he received 40 Bitcoins.

Mumbai: India’s enforcement agency has arrested one of the founders of event management company Katalyst Entertainment from Delhi in connection with an alleged cryptocurrency scam running into AED 3 billion (₹6,606 crore) involving their firm Variabletech PTE Ltd.

The Bitcoin scam

“Already a woman accused is behind bars in connection with this crime. In the investigation it was found that multilevel marketing agents and associates have collected 80,000 Bitcoins valuing at AED 3 billion as on November 2017 from gullible investors and none of them was paid any returns,” the court said while remanding him to custody.

“In this way, thousands of investors had invested their hard-earned life earnings and savings and converted the same into Bitcoins to invest in the said company’s scheme and ultimately lost everything.”

The court further said, “Papers of investigation prima-facie indicate the role attributed to the accused… that he propagated and promoted the said scam by conducting seminars in Dubai and for that he received 40 Bitcoins. According to the agency, accused are in continuous possession of proceeds of crime, concealing and utilising the same. It is specific contention of agency that the present accused is an active participant of the wider conspiracy of his scam and has played active role in acquisition and concealing the proceeds of crime.”

Probe findings

The agency contended that during the probe, the accused admitted his involvement in advertisement of various schemes of his firms. In the reply, the accused admitted that Katalyst Entertainment (Katalyst) used to manage the publicity events. Besides, he also admitted that his company managed to get celebrities for two events and they included actresses Neha Dhupia, Sunny Leone, Sonal Chauhan, Prachi Desai, Aarti Chabaria and others.

In his statement, the accused said, “The payments were made in BTC to the Bitcoin exchangers in Dubai, which in turn were used to pay further for location and even managing company. In total about 30-40 Bitcoins were paid.”

(This article is published under a mutual content partnership arrangement between The Brew News and The Free Press Journal)

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