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The Enforcement Directorate's Mumbai wing provisionally attached immovable assets worth Rs 10.63 crores on Monday (February 17) in connection to the illegal Bitcoin fraud ponzi case, officials said. The attached properties belong to Late Amit Bhardwaj in a case registered under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) Act, 2002. The accused duped unsuspecting investors from across the country to the tune of Rs 6,500 the ED operation, commercial properties situated in prime business centers of Dubai have also been ED initiated an investigation on the basis of multiple FIRs registered by Maharashtra Police and Delhi Police against Variable Tech Pte Ltd, Amit Bhardwaj, his relatives Ajay Bhardwaj, Vivek Bhardwaj, Simpy Bhardwaj, Mahender Bhardwaj and a number of Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) agents, wherein it has been alleged that they had collected huge amounts of funds in the form of Bitcoins from the gullible investors, making false promises of 10 percent per month return in form of collected Bitcoins were supposed to be utilised for Bitcoin mining and investors were supposed to get huge returns in crypto assets. But the promoters cheated the investors and have been concealing the ill-gotten Bitcoins in obscure online wallets, officials search operations have been carried out in the case in the recent past, resulting in the arrests of Simpy Bhardwaj on December 17, 2023; Nitin Gaur on December 29, 2023 and Nikhil Mahajan on January 16, 2023. The main accused, Ajay Bhardwaj and Mahendra Bhardwaj are still at large. Earlier, the ED had attached properties worth Rs 172 Crore. The prosecution complaint was filed on June 11, 2019 and a Supplementary Prosecution Complaint was registered on February 14, 2024. The Special Court (PMLA) has taken cognizance of the ED has further sought assistance from foreign countries since the money sourced out of Proof of Concept (PoC) has travelled abroad, ED officials said. Further investigation is under By: Vivek Published On: Feb 20, 2025Must Watch
