A $300 million crypto Ponzi scheme scam of India uncovered
The cryptocurrency world experience and number of scams in the past decade. There were a number of ways in which they scammed the investors. A similar incident was witnessed in India.
Manipulating large swaths of people in order to get your things done is sure must be at considered as an art and we all must agree that Amit Bhardwaj was one of the kind. Similar to influencers like Che Guevara or Osho he was able to convince a huge number of people into investing in his crypto Ponzi scheme.
The scammer taught the people of India the power and potential of Bitcoin and made them invest in his coin named GainBitcoin. Also at his multi-level marketing company, Bitcoin growth fund, he had promised people a 10% monthly return on his Bitcoin Investment up to almost 18 months. At all of his MLM MVP meets he made sure that his investors got a feeling that they are on the top of the world and no one else is as smart as they are.
Guevara and Osho comparison
He was repeatedly being compared to Osho and Guevara because he was the one who had introduced Bitcoin to the Indian traders, Investors as well as users.
Shivam thakral, CEO at BuyUCoin also agrees to the fact that he was the one, who had helped in scaling up the cryptocurrency business in India. He continued that initially, the investors got their monthly returns but what happened eventually even he didn’t have any clue.
He considered himself as a cryptocurrency Guru and also started up a number of cryptocurrency companies such as AmazeMiners, GB Miners, GainBitcoin and CoinBank under the parent company Amaze Mining And Blockchain Research Ltd, which were dealing with cryptocurrency mining, wallet, research, and development, and also the MLM schemes. However, when he received the sufficient investments from his investors he flew away with the money.
The irritated investors had filed a number of non-bailable FIRs last year when he was hiding in Dubai. However, he did not respond to any of allegations.
On 30th March he faked a heart attack at the Dubai airport and managed to fly off to Bangkok where the Indian police intervened and took him into custody. He is accused to have scammed almost $300 million through his Investors. Post his arrest in Thailand he had been brought back to Pune where the original FIRs were filed.
On 5tg April, the Cyber Cell along with the Economic Offence Wing of the Pune police informed media about the same. He has been under the police custody since March 31st, 2018.
The Math that went wrong
The biggest drawback in his multi-level marketing scheme was the mode of investment and returns which was Bitcoin. let’s try to understand this through an example. Suppose if the investor takes some amount of currency and promised to give a 10% return then could have been ok. But Amit took the investment in Bitcoin and promised to return a 10% return in Bitcoin itself which was not possible at all. But he was able to fool his investors into believing that it was possible due to his cloud mining pool which he had set up in China. However, it did not matter how big his mining pool was because it could never Outnumber the number of investors joining his multi-level marketing scheme.
As a little time pass on he changed his marketing scheme and introduced the MCAP tokens which he used as a payout to invest in the MLM scheme. He even changed the buyout policy by stating that half of the return on investment would be in Bitcoin and the remaining would be in the MCAP tokens.
The chase
The philosophy of Amit’s investors did not resonate with that of his philosophy when they stopped replying to their investor’s emails. And they have even alleged that the company stopped replying to their emails once the investment took place.
Amit Bhardwaj clearly saw the future in Bitcoin and started a number of cryptocurrency schemes which are now turned out to be Ponzi schemes. He actually underestimated the factor which decides the value of the Bitcoin and went ahead without making an informed choice with initiating a number of cryptocurrency companies and hence attracting a lot of Investments.
In this millennial world, it is very common for the newbies to try out and kind of play with the all technologies that come on, but never realize when their playful venture can turn out to become very serious for others. Also, the investors, on the other hand, must do a complete research on the history of the company before making any kind of Investments. It can be summed up that the frauds and scams are not a one-way process but are possible only when the investors are foolish enough to believe in the fraudsters. Hence expert advice must be taken before making any kinds of investments as they are subjected to market risk.
