“We are conducting raids based on information gathered during the interrogation of the accused. The accused had invested huge money in cryptocurrencies and several bank accounts are under our scanner,” said a senior official of the Kolkata Police. Kolkata Police on Thursday continued with their search operation at several locations in the city in connection with the gaming app fraud case on the second consecutive day, and claimed to have seized some hard disks and pen drives.
Police sources said searches were carried out at several premises in Park Street, New Market, Behala, Girish Park, Rajabazar, Tollygunj and Gardenreach localities.
“We are conducting raids based on information gathered during the interrogation of the accused. The accused had invested huge money in cryptocurrencies and several bank accounts are under our scanner,” said a senior official of the Kolkata Police.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday said that they had frozen bitcoins worth Rs 12.83 crore as part of its ongoing money laundering probe against the promoter of a Kolkata-based mobile gaming app firm, which allegedly duped several people.
Police alleged that the main accused, Amir Khan, had invested in cryptocurrency and suspected that he routed money outside India. Police further alleged that money from different accounts were transferred to the account of Sima Naskar, proprietor of Pixal Design, before it was routed outside the country.
The ED too claimed that the accused was transferring a part of the amount illegally earned through the gaming app to overseas locations by using a cryptocurrency exchange. “It was found that one such dummy account in the name of Sima Naskar was opened in the WazirX crypto exchange, which was used to purchase cryptocurrencies/crypto assets. Later, the cryptocurrencies were further transferred to another account in another crypto exchange called Binance. The balance of this crypto amount (77.62710139 Bitcoins) is equivalent to USD 15,73,466 or about Rs 12.83 crore kept in Binance crypto exchange and that has been frozen,” the ED claimed.
Amir and five others — Prosenjit Sarkar (32), Rahul Pal (37), Samit Mandal (37), Pradip Bajpai (29) and Soma Naskar (28) — were arrested in this connection, so far, said police.
Police sources claimed that Amir — arrested in Uttar Praesh’s Ghaziabad by the detective department of the Kolkata Police on September 23 — and his associates used to run fake call centres, but they refused to divulge further details.
“Cryptocurrency worth 77.62710139 bitcoins is kept in the Binance crypto exchange and it belongs to a person named Aamir Khan, who owns a mobile gaming application called E-Nuggets,” said the ED, which had raided the premises of the company and that of Aamir in Kolkata earlier this month and seized Rs 17.32 crore in cash.