Man held in bitcoin fraud

A man was arrested by Hyderabad police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) for allegedly cheating people to the tune of crores by luring them to invest in online business involving bitcoin for higher returns.

Sirimalla Nagaraju created four websites – Rosnefthedgefund.ru, rhfcoin.com, rhfgold.com, and eurescoin.com – for collecting money for bitcoin business and duped over 500 people, Joint Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty said.

“During his tenure, he successfully lured nearly 500 members to join the scheme and collected crores of rupees as per company binary concept,” he said.

The accused had appointed several people as regional heads and agents in different states and induced victims to deposit huge amounts for a term of 18 weeks and promised that every week, the returns would be sent online to their accounts, Mr. Mohanty said.

“Nagaraju collected approximately ₹52 crore from about 1,200 depositors from all over the country and about 250 depositors from Telangana and other southern states who deposited around ₹10 crore,” Mr. Mohanty added.

Based on the complaint lodged by the victims, a case under sections 66 C, and D, Income Tax Act, and sections 419, 420, and 120 (B) of the IPC and Section 5 of the Telangana State Protection of Depositors of Financial Establishments Act was filed. He was also booked under sections 3, 4, and 5 of Prize Chit and Money Circulation (Banning) Act.