India like any other country has many criminals and today, cryptocurrencies offer these criminals new ways to extort money from their victims. Former BJP MLA Nalin Kotadiya is an absconder in the multi-crore bitcoin extortion case where he received 15% of the 176 bitcoins stolen worth about 9.45Cr INR or about $1.38M. He was being probed by the state (CID) Criminal Investigation Department-Crime wing.
It has now been reported by Business-Standard that additional sessions judge P G Tamakuwala declared Kotadiya a "proclaimed offender" (absconder) under section 82 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC ) in response to an application by the CID, and asked him to appear before the court within 30 days.
Several policemen including a Superintendent of Police have been arrested so far while Nalin himself has been absconding and has not been traced yet.
Surat-based realty company owner and builder Shailesh Bhatt, had alleged that policemen from Amreli kidnapped him and his business partner Kirit Paladia from Gandhinagar on February 9 and extorted 176 bitcoins worth Rs 9 crore owned by Kirit.
Upon kidnapping they were forced to transfer them Bitcoin cryptocurrency and allegedly Nalin Kotadiya was involved in conspiring against Shailesh. Such kidnappings where Bitcoin is used for ransom money has happened in many other parts of the world.
It's a growing concern these days where anyone who holds cryptos can be held at gun point and forced to transfer their tokens over to someone else.
Growing popularity of cryptocurrencies have also led a slight increase in crimes related to cryptocurrencies. Since transactions are irreversible, extortionists can get away easier if they are able to escape from law.
India as a country deals with a great deal of systemic corruption and has politicians and parliamentarians with a history of criminal offence and charges of corruption. My hope for the future of blockchain technology is that it helps in eradication of such corruption in the government through various use case application of this technology.
As you can understand from this case, RBI and the Indian government have some valid reasons for discouraging use of cryptocurrencies. Most people who are involved in speculating on these digital tokens are largely ignorant about them. For scammers and ponzi scheme owners, cryptos have opened several new doors and provided them the means to scam people out of their hard earned income.
Politicians in India feel they are accountable to none and that's unfortunately the case for many of them. As for this offender, I hope CID is able to nab him and put him behind bars. I'm also glad CID is there to watch over the corruption in the police force in the country!
What are your thoughts on this matter. Have you come across a situation in your own life where someone was forced to give up their cryptos due to threat to personal safety?
If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
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My bitcoin coach who got me in early always preached a few fundamentals:
If only I listened to him on all these points I would be so much better off. :)
If the Ministers of ruling government of India are involved in such a heinous crime, what would one expect from normal people...
yup right bro
Indeed!
Whatttt! Too much money! I saw this on reddit a few hours ago:-
Correct!
I wish there was a way to keep your wallet balance away from prying eyes here on Steemit without having to store in some alt-account. This situation could get worse in the next few years.
Yes @firepower. We need a feature to hide our numbers in the wallet! But still people would figure it out through upvote values. Not sure how this can be implemented in a perfect way.
I really personally havent come across anyone like that and the probability of coming across someone who was conned out of their cryptos is low as adoption is low.
If BJP MLA is involved, i guess then at least the govt should soften its stance on crypto trading because this bugger will have to cash out. More money for him if trading is allowed and liqidity is plenty else he will have to pay illiquidity premium.
I am new to cryptocurrency and Steemit and, I must say, this post was really eye-opening for me! I had no idea that things are as bad as that - thugs and even policemen extorting bitcoins from people! The fact that your financial status on Steemit could not be kept hidden seems rather disturbing now.
In India politicians doing so many scams but they don't want common people to earn through handwork as well that's why still suspense on bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Legalization
How criminals are master mind, they planned very accurately. I also met a fraud like that in steemit chat, who wanted me to transfer 50 SBD and he promised to give me 2000 SP delegation instead, I denied his offer.
an eye opener post.. but really cant do much about it..
transactions are irreversible.
So sad to have these effects.