Hyderabad cyber cops catch crook, crack crypto case

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Cybercrime police came to the rescue of a young techie who lost close to Rs 38 lakh to a designer after inadvertently paying him in Bitcoins rather than in US Dollars as agreed earlier. Sub-inspector Ch Gangadhar, who is attached to the Hyderabad Cybercrime police, said that his team faced its most challenging task yet to successfully track the designer using his ‘Wallet’ address. “It took us over a month to track him and recover the entire amount,” the S-I told TNIE.

It all began with the Cybercrime wing receiving a call from the victim who stated that he developed a cryptocurrency and was ready to float it on the available platforms. The techie hired a designer to help him design the posters and ads for his cryptocurrency. The designer agreed to design the posters and ads for US Dollars 70. However, after completing his part of the task, the techie paid the designer in cryptocurrency, instead of Dollars, losing Rs 38 lakh in the process.

SI Gangadhar said his team received two such complaints in 2020 and none during 2021. “However, since the beginning of 2022, we are receiving an average of five complaints per month in the city alone. With over 20,000 cryptocurrency coins being sold on various platforms across the globe, we face huge challenges as the applications do not mention the wallet address,” he said.

He said that in this particular case, the cybercrime sleuths managed to trace the wallet address and track the designer to Uttar Pradesh. Once the case was registered, the cybercrime sleuths managed to trace the wallet through the cryptocurrency used -- Bitcoin in this instance. They then contacted the designer who refused to return the amount.

With the given address, sleuths tracked him down and recovered the entire amount from the designer.
S-I Gangadhar said that this was the first such case they successfully cracked. “Generally, cases involving cryptocurrency are based or have their origins abroad. It is close to impossible to trace the wallet