New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Friday swooped down on Ladakh for the first time in the history of the region, and also searched five other places to probe a fake cryptocurrency investment scheme that defrauded more than 2,508 investors of over Rs 7 crore, ThePrint has learnt.
The raids began early morning in Leh, Jammu districts and Haryana’s Sonipat, in premises linked to Leh residents A.R. Mir and Ajay Kumar Choudhary, who ran a cryptocurrency syndicate that promised to double investors’ money or return an assured 40 percent if they agreed to a lock-in period of 10 months.
The ED’s money-laundering probe stems from cases filed by Ladakh Police in March 2020 based on an inquiry conducted by then Leh district magistrate Sachin Kumar Vaishya.
The probe found Mir and Choudhary were running a fraudulent cryptocurrency business in the name of “Emollient Coin Limited”, that appropriated a total sum of Rs 7.36 crore.
The duo is yet to be questioned.
Modus operandi
Sources in the agency told ThePrint that an Enforcement Complaint Information Report (ED’s version of an FIR) was registered last year and investigators have so far assessed that Mir and Choudhary accumulated funds in the form of cash, or money transfer or through exchange of Bitcoins while selling investors fake crypto.
To pull in more money, Mir and his aides would encourage investors to earn commissions of up to 7 percent by referring the scheme to more and more people.
“Investors were lured with a commission of up to 7 percent on investments made by people referred by them. The commission was said to be distributed into different layers with first-level referral earning 7 percent, second level 3 percent, third level 1 percent and so on… Commissions were assured till the 10th referral level,” an agency source said.
Another said the probe had found that Mir and Choudhary neither returned the assured money nor the cryptocurrency and instead started a real estate business and purchased land parcels in Jammu.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)