: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Police has arrested one more accused in the Solar Techno Alliance (STA) Crypto-Ponzi scam.
The accused Ratnakar Palai (45) was arrested from Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. Earlier, the EOW had arrested to STA head Gurtej Singh Sidhu and STA Odisha head Nirod Das in connection with the scam.
Sidhu was arrested from Rajasthan while t Nirod was arrested from Bhadrak. As per EOW, the accused Ratnaka is an important member of STA having huge number of members below him (known as down-line members in the MLM/ Pyramid based schemes).
Palai is very close to Gurtej and Nirod. “Palai is an alumnus in IT from Karnataka University, Bengaluru and claims to be an international speaker, entrepreneur and investment guru. He is also propaganda head and social media influencer of STA in Odisha,” said the EOW.
The agency said Palai used to run a YouTube channel for wider publicity of this scheme. He is member of some other such dubious scams too which is under th scanner. He also runs an institute namely ‘Learn to earn”.
In STA Crypto-Ponzi scam, the OPID Court in Cuttack has granted five more days remand of both the accused, Gurtej Singh Sidhu and Nirod. It is suspected that more than 10,000 people from Odisha have already been members of this scheme.
This scheme/scam has more than 2 lakh members (pan India) mainly in the States like Punjab, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Assam. The STA was launched in September 2021, said the EOW.