The Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached immovable properties and bank balances worth Rs 42.88 crore derived by accused Amit Bhardwaj and his accomplices in Bitcoin Trading Ponzi scheme under the banner of Variabletech Pvt Ltd Singapore.  

These attached properties include six offices of Bhardwaj located at Dubai (UAE) and the flats and bank balances of his two marketing agents Hemant Bhope and Pankaj Adlakha.

The ED probe has revealed that Amit Bhardwaj had started a company at Singapore under the banner of Variabletech Pvt Ltd in 2015 and through its web-site www.gainbitcoin.com, he launched a ponzi scheme of Bitcoin trading.

Bitcoin is a virtual crypto-currency which is popular amongst a section of the investors. Under the said scheme, Bhardwaj, through his team of marketing agents, used to lure the gullible people by asking them to buy Bitcoins out of their investments and then invest these Bitcoins in his gainbitcoin scheme by promising high returns.

Through this scheme, Bhardwaj and his marketing agents were able to collect investments worth about 80,000 Bitcoins. However, instead of paying back the promised returns to the investors in Bitcoins, Bhardwaj offered them returns in his own newly launched crypto-currency token MCAP which had nearly no value on crypto-currency exchanges.

A large numbers of investors in Bhardwaj's firm were cheated in this way, the ED said.

The ED initiated investigation under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 resulting in the provisional attachments of immovable properties and bank balances worth Rs 42.88 crore.