The chase and run game finally end with the arrest of Scamster Amit Bhardwaj.He has allegedly tricked thousands of innocent Indian citizens in a Ponzi Bitcoin scheme - GainBitcoin, worth $3000 million (approx Rs 2,000 crore). He pushed GainBitcoin offerings with advertisement campaigns across leading publication houses. He tempted investors with an assurance of 10 percent of investment value each month for 18 months which in total profits to 80 percent after 18 months.
Bhardwaj was caught in Dubai a few months back, but he managed to avoid arrest by staging a fake heart attack at the Dubai Airport. It is also claimed that he is backed by ISI, a Pakistan Intelligence Agency. Indian Government then collaborated with the Government of Thailand. He was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand and is now being brought to Pune. The arrest has given the victims a prey of relief.
He is an alumnus of MGM’s College of Engineering, Nanded and has also worked with IT firm Infosys. He also managed to work on India’s first online retailer – Highkart which allowed Bitcoin based payments. But the company soon closed doors in 2016. Bhardwaj has also said to runs two cryptocurrency operation based companies - GBMiners and GainBitcoin. Both the companies are subsidiaries of Amaze Mining & Research Ltd, a Hong-Kong based entity.
He also founded another cryptocurrency based startup named MCAP in April 2017. Its ICO was valued $5, and miners were initially given an option to accept the payout in the form of MCAP tokens which was later the only option. One of the frustrated users of the website commented: “Gainbitcoin is a BIG FRAUD. As long as you submit money, it is fast and will take seconds, however, when you have to withdraw your BTCs, it will take several days of your time and extensive research on internet. They ask you to create account at multiple sites like coinbank, c-cex etc. (SEE.. COINBANK IS DIFFERENT FROM COINBASE.. THEY HAVE NAMED IT COINBANK JUST TO RESEMBLE A GENUINE WEBSITE)They will ask you to convert your BTC to MCAP and you will get only 10% of the actual value. They will send your BTC to coinbank in MCAP, from coinbank to c-cex, now convert these MCAP to BTC and then to your actual wallet. If you have send $1000.00 worth BTC to them, they will promise to pay $1800.00 worth BTC in 18 months, however, will actually pay $180.00. So you will loose $1620.00 in 18 months.”
Cryptocurrency investments in India are rising since last 12 to 18 months. As per reports, over the period of 17 months, more than $3.5 billion worth of transactions have been conducted via cryptocurrency.