Delhi cops bust crypto coin minting unit in Dehradun

In a first-of-its-kind seizure in the country, Delhi Police’s Cyber Cell has busted a cryptocurrency mining unit in Dehradun where Ethereum coins were being “minted” and sold in the global market.

The unit came on the radar of police after its owners Kamal Singh, a DU graduate, and Vijay Kumar, an engineer, were arrested on April 25 for duping scores of people in a cryptocurrency racket. The two accused had cheated people of over Rs 100 crore by making them invest in a ponzi scheme involving Bitcoins through their website bits2btc.com and then vanishing with the money.

A team led by additional DCP (Cyber Cell) KPS Malhotra raided the 4,000 sq ft complex in Dehradun and found a huge mining rig of crypto coins comprising high-powered computer processers, 500 graphics cards and servers. Police found over 100 such Ethereum rigs in the warehouse. The accused had told curious neighbours that it was a computer processor unit with servers of a big company.

While interrogating Singh and Kumar, cops found that they had invested the cheated amount in Dehradun. The crooks had not just been running bits2btc.com, but had even come up with their own currency — HBX and Mcap. They were also running another website, gainbitcoin.com, with other associates and selling non-existent cryptocurrency, police found.

The money cheated with the help of these two firms was being invested in buying Ethereum. Later, these crypto coins were used to “mint” more Ethereum.

The men had taken the property on rent in September 2017 and roped in eight people as miners through a local computer dealer. These miners worked odd hours to add more Ethereum into the market. A local was also roped in for maintaining the servers and other operations of the unit.

Cops suspect that the gang made approximately Rs 70 lakh from the unit in the past three months by selling cryptocurrency.

A raiding team led by inspectors Jagdish and KL Yadav also found that a rift had appeared between the partners. While Kumar and Singh were on one side, their third partner, SS Alagh, wanted to take full control. This led to Kumar, who used to do the mining, even filing a police complaint against Alagh.

“Kumar had lodged a complaint with the local police alleging that Alagh and his associates had kidnapped him,” an officer said, adding that this complaint led them to the accused.

Investigating officers are now sending teams to locate Alagh, who is still at large. The local who was working with the accused has been taken in custody and it is being investigated whether more such mining units were established by the gang.