By An Australian citizen by the name of Harpreet Singh Sahni was recently arrested in India for running a $28 million crypto Ponzi, the times of India reports. The Madhya Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) arrested the man on Monday after he was accused of promoting a fake company and scamming countless Indian-Australians off thousands of dollars after he promised them high returns.
A well planned Ponzi
Sahni had been promoting a fraudulent company under the name of ‘Plus Gold Union Coin (PGUC)’ with some other members in 22 countries that include France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Colombia, Finland and Nigeria, and duped a total of 2 billion INR from their clueless victims. The man started the get rich quick scheme in 2017 where he ensured high returns with low risk by organizing various seminars and presentations. He compelled everyone to invest, stating that PGUC is a “hybrid crypto” and has a potential for massive growth in a few years. He asserted that his project ran on a “Script (PoW/PoS)” powered decentralized crypto payments platform and investors were informed they could earn more PGUC coins by staking or mining via the platforms “self-regulated” financial system.
The STF has seized several videos of these said seminars, where the team members have been caught saying that the company arose from a ‘European company with metal mining background’. The funds were mostly secured in cash to keep things under the radar. The accused even used a Malaysian resident to convince the victims, and used a special web application for video conferencing with investors and he was paid $3000 or this. Investigators found two properties that have a net worth of $1.8 million under the scammer’s name in Australia that was supposedly purchased with investors’ money.
Countless people got Scammed
“Everything looked genuine… a nice website with our personal dashboard and presentations by the promoters that were slick and statistical graphs indicating projected growth,” Rajiv Sharma, one of the victims who lost $52,000 in the scheme – told the news outlet SBS.
Deepika Shinde, a member of the STF investigating the PGUC case said:
“He was working with the people who started this scheme and knew as far back as December 2017 that PGUC was a fake currency. But he kept promoting it and received a part in the profit.”
Bhavesh Patel, another victim of this organisation told SBS that he had his parents mortgage their agricultural land in India to raise $30,000 which he later invested in PGUC. Bhavesh needed the money to pay for the hospital bills as his wife was in need of urgent medical care. However, when he tried to cash out of the scheme and wanted his money back, the scammers came up with excuses. He explains:
“They even came to meet my wife at the hospital and said ‘Bhavesh bhai, your money will be doubled in three months and you can easily pay the hospital bill. They knew why I needed the money and they still did this to me.”
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