Standard Chartered manager arrested for crypto fraud

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The manager of Standard Chartered bank in Gurugram, India was arrested by the Delhi Police for his involvement in financial fraud and cryptocurrency scams.

According to police reports, the accused, Sandeep Singh Dua, was interrogated by a team of Crime Branch Cyber cell on Monday and was then arrested after he plead guilty. Sources have it that Dua was working as a conduit between account holders of shell companies and the scammers. He also admitted that he was an active member of a gang of frauds, who used the fake accounts of shell companies for transactions as a way to evade paying tax.

During the interrogation, seven other people, Narener, Asif Malkani, Balijeet Singh Saini, Pradeep Arora, Sunil Kumar, Puneet Mahindra, and Ashok Goel, were arrested as Dua’s accomplices in the case. One of these men later disclosed that Dua was part of the conspiracy.

The gang was exposed when one Arun Kumar, a resident of Delhi’s Ghonda, filed a complaint against a the group who deceived him into investing over$20,326.60 in a newly-launched cryptocurrency known as Kashhcoin. This complaint was filed in August 2017.Dua was then discovered approximately two years later.

It was found that Dua organized fancy seminars in various cities and invited a lot of eminent Bollywood celebrities to convince people to invest.

According to the RBI guidelines, Dua’s offer of cryptocurrency was not authentic at all:

“The creation, trading or usage of virtual currencies including Bitcoin as a medium for payment is not authorized by any central bank or monetary authority.”

In March, police in Delhi were also called upon to help investigate a cryptocurrency scam in India. In the investigation, police arrested four individuals suspected to have taken part in the biggest crypto scam in the region. According to reports, the four allegedly conducted the scam using CashCoin and were implicated for $14.5 million.

The four, including the suspected kingpin, Ashok Goyal started the project in 2018. Early investors in the project received profits which in turn lured more investors. A Bollywood actor was also allegedly involved in the scheme.