Shimla:

The Himachal Pradesh Police has arrested one of the masterminds of a Rs 2,500-crore cryptocurrency scam, which was unearthed in the state in 2022, from Kolkata, officials said on Thursday.

Accused Milan Garg (35), a resident of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested on Wednesday night from the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, Kolkata while he was trying to flee to Bangkok in Thailand, they said.

Garg, who was allegedly involved in designing and marketing of a fake cryptocurrency, was later brought to Shimla, Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Northern Range, Abhishek Dhullar told PTI.

Garg, who earlier fled to Dubai after the scam came to light, had returned to India in June and was again leaving the country when he was detained at Kolkata airport. The accused has been arrested and brought to Shimla, said Dhullar, who is heading an SIT probing the case.

The accused, the main associate of kingpin Subash Sharma who is still at large, was involved in designing of the cryptocurrency, software development and marketing, Dhullar said, adding that he would also convince prospective investors.

The cryptocurrency scam, which has duped thousands of people, started in 2018 but came to light in 2022 as the perpetrators of the fraud had threatened the investors to keep their mouth shut or lose money.

The investors smelled something fishy when they did not get money in return, but the victims did not come out openly against the fraudsters. However, later hundreds of victims came forward and uncovered the modus operandi of scammers and so far over 300 complaints have been received in this regard.

Police have arrested 26 people in connection with the case and charge sheets have been filed against 70 people so far. Some of the main accused arrested included Hemraj, Sukhdev, both from Mandi and Arun Guleria and Abhishekh from Una district of Himachal.

The scammers lured people by promising handsome returns in a short span of time and built a network of investors. People from different sections of society, including policemen and teachers, got involved in the scheme for quick returns.

The fraudsters approached people with an investment plan related to a locally made (in Mandi district) cryptocurrency known as ‘Korvio Coin’ or KRO coins. Three to four kinds of cryptocurrency were used and false websites in which the cryptocurrency prices were manipulated and inflated were created, police said.

Cryptocurrency is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not dependent on any central authority, such as the government or bank to uphold or maintain it.

The website used for the crypto scam had around 2.5 lakh different IDs. The accused used a combination of misinformation, deception and threats to maintain control over the scheme causing huge financial losses to the victims, police said.

Over a thousand police personnel have also fallen victim to the fraud.

While a majority of them were duped of crores of rupees, some of them made huge gains by creating chains by roping in more investors and opted for voluntary retirement scheme (VRS), and became its promoters, police said.

“The kingpin of the scam, Subhash Sharma from Sarkaghat in Himachal’s Mandi district, is still at large and probably hiding in the UAE. Efforts are underway to bring him back,” a police officer said.

The SIT investigations have also revealed that the kingpin and other key accused invested in plots and flats in Himachal, Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana, besides buying luxury items and high-end cars, and even indulged in tax evasion.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Philadelphia, United States:

The “wine trader” wooed her online for months with his flirtatious smile and emoji-sprinkled texts. Then he went for the kill, defrauding the Philadelphia-based tech professional out of $450,000 in a cryptocurrency romance scam.

The con — which drained Shreya Datta, 37, of her savings and retirement funds while saddling her with debt — involved the use of digitally altered deepfake videos and a script so sophisticated that she felt her “brain was hacked.”

The scam is commonly known as “pig butchering,” with victims likened to hogs fattened up by fraudsters with feigned love and affection before the proverbial slaughter — tricking them into a fake crypto investment.

The rapid growth of this fraud, thought to be run by crime syndicates in Southeast Asia, has resulted in losses worth billions of dollars in the United States, with victims saying there is little recourse to recover the money.

As it has for many victims, Datta’s experience began on a dating app — Hinge, in her case, where last January she met “Ancel,” who introduced himself as a French wine trader based in Philadelphia.

Datta said she was “charisma bombed” as the conversation quickly moved to WhatsApp. The gym buff with a dreamy smile deleted his Hinge profile to give her “focused attention,” a refreshing experience in the age of fleeting online relationships.

They exchanged selfies, flirty emoticons and did brief video calls in which the suave but “shy” man posed with a dog, later determined to be AI deepfakes.

They texted daily, with “Ancel” enquiring about little things like whether she had eaten, preying on Datta’s desire for a caring companion after her divorce.

Plans to physically meet kept getting pushed back, but Datta was not immediately suspicious. On Valentine’s Day last year, she received a bouquet from “Ancel” sent from a Philadelphia flower shop, with the card addressing her as “Honey Cream.”

When she sent him a selfie, posing with the flowers, he sprayed her with red kiss mark emojis, according to WhatsApp exchanges seen by AFP.

‘Traumatizing’

Between the mushy exchanges, “Ancel” sold her a dream.

“The dream was, ‘I’m retiring early, I’m well off. What is your plan?'” Datta, who is from India, told AFP.

“He’s like, ‘I’ve made all this money investing. Do you really want to work till you’re 65?'”

He sent her a link to download a crypto trading app — which came with two-factor authentication to make it appear legitimate — and showed her what he called money-making trades through annotated screenshots seen by AFP.

Datta converted some of her savings into cryptocurrency on the US-based exchange Coinbase and the fake app initially allowed her to withdraw her early gains, boosting her confidence to invest more.

“As you make astronomical amounts of money trading, it messes with your normal risk perception,” Datta said in hindsight.

“You feel like, ‘Wow, I can do even more.'”

“Ancel” egged her on to invest more savings, take out loans and, despite her reluctance, liquidate her retirement fund.

By March, Datta’s nearly $450,000 investment had more than doubled on paper, but alarm bells went off when she tried to withdraw the amount and the app demanded a personal “tax.”

She turned to her London-based brother, who did a reverse image search of the pictures “Ancel” had sent her and found they were of a German fitness influencer.

“When I realized it was all a scam and all the money was gone, I had proper PTSD symptoms — I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t function,” Datta said.

“It was very traumatizing.”

– ‘Brainwashed’ –
Dating sites are rife with disinformation, with Facebook groups such as “Tinder swindler dating scams” and “Are we dating the same guy?” cropping up, and researchers calling out the growing use of AI-generated profile pictures.

But the use of romance as a hook to commit financial fraud is provoking new alarm.

The FBI told AFP that last year more than 40,000 people reported losses totaling well over $3.5 billion from cryptocurrency fraud, including pig butchering, to the agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

But that estimate is likely low, as many victims tend not to report the crime out of shame.

“What’s horrific about this crime is it is meant to take every last penny from its victim,” Erin West, a California-based prosecutor, told AFP, adding that she is “deluged with victims every day.”

Self-harm among victims is a common concern, campaigners say, with most unable to recover their losses and some falling prey to another breed of scammers — fake recovery agents.

Datta, who is in therapy and has moved to a smaller apartment to manage her debt, said she had little hope of recovery after reporting the crime to the FBI and Secret Service.

Neither body responded to AFP’s queries about her particular case. Nor did Coinbase, which informed Datta in an email — after she was conned — that she “may have sent cryptocurrency to a fraudulent investment platform.”

More agonizing, Datta said, was dealing with public judgments such as, “How could you be so stupid?”

“There should be no shame in becoming a victim of this absolutely masterful psychological scam,” West said.

“Victims are truly brainwashed.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)