The CBI has filed a chargesheet against a Delhi-resident who allegedly posed as a Canadian Government official and coerced his targets into transferring their assets to crypto wallets.
The accused then siphoned off the crypto funds in collusion with his accomplices who have also been named in the chargesheet.
The agency has named suspects Sahil Pal, Himanshu and Ashish Bhambhani as the accused in its chargesheet filed under the Indian Penal Code sections related to criminal conspiracy, cheating and extortion, besides provisions of the Information Technology Act, officials said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had booked the trio on May 11 on inputs from Canadian authorities.
Pal has approached a special court seeking default bail, claiming that since the chargesheet was not filed within 60 days of his arrest, he is eligible for the relief.
The CBI had booked the trio for allegedly posing as Canadian government officials to cheat Quebec-based Trishan Goussard in September last year.
They allegedly asked Goussard to deposit CAD 7,006 (around Rs 4.35 lakh at present exchange rates) in a crypto wallet to avoid several fraud charges in his compromised social insurance number, the agency has alleged in the FIR. An unsuspecting Goussard deposited the amount through a Bitcoin ATM. The wallet was last active on the Binance application through an IP address that had 103 instances of logs linked to a mobile phone number registered in the name of Bhambani, it alleged.
"Their modus operandi involved providing fake technical support consultation to unsuspecting victims and coercing them into transferring cryptocurrency funds.
These ill-gotten cryptocurrency assets were subsequently routed through multiple crypto wallets, ultimately ending up in the perpetrators' crypto accounts," the CBI had said after registering the case.