India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) announced the confiscation of $4.8 million worth of assets on Tuesday, August 6. The financial watchdog said that an individual named Chirag Tomar defrauded crypto investors of $20 million via fake Coinbase websites. Tomar is presently imprisoned in the U.S. for his fraudulent activities.
As part of its investigation, the ED also claimed to have seized other assets including 18 immovable Delhi-based properties from Tomar, his family, and his affiliates.
“ED initiated investigation on the basis of newspaper report that an Indian national named Chirag Tomar was arrested in USA for stealing more than $20 million through use of fake or spoofed websites mimicking Coinbase,” the agency said.
Tomar used SEO techniques to surface the fake Coinbase websites instead of the real one to get unsuspecting investors to engage.
“When the users would enter the login credentials, the spoofed website
would show it wrong. Therefore, the users would contact the number given in the spoofed website which would eventually connect them to the designated call centre managed by Tomar. Once the fraudsters gained access to the victim’s accounts, the fraudsters quickly transferred the victim’s crypto holdings to crypto wallets under their control,” the ED noted.
While some portion of the stolen crypto funds have been sold on various crypto platforms, some has been converted to INR and wired into accounts linked to Tomar and his affiliates.
The list of crypto-related scams has evidently grown in India over the last few years.
Just last month, for instance, an Indian civil contractor was duped off $200,000 by a marriage prospect who claimed to work in a crypto trading company and convinced him to invest, promising high returns.
The ED has been partnering with crypto firms like Binance to act as custodians of assets seized in the course of criminal investigations.