A court in Dimapur has declared Bhupesh Arora, the kingpin of a Rs 2,200-crore cryptocurrency racket named HPZ Token, a fugitive under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA).
The declaration allows the government to confiscate all assets of Arora, who is said to have fled to Dubai.
In an order passed on Wednesday, the N. Longsitung Ezun Magistrate Court in Dimapur granted the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) application to declare Mr. Arora a ‘fugitive economic offender’ and confiscate his properties.
The HPZ token scam is an alleged investment scam perpetrated by Delhi-based Bhupesh Arora in which investors were promised huge profits through cryptocurrency trading. Most of the victims were found to be in Nagaland and Assam. Based on the Nagaland Police FIR, the ED started an investigation in 2022. Later, Assam Police and CBI also registered an FIR.
The ED investigation revealed that the funds in the scam were swindled through over 140 shell companies and 200 bank accounts across 20 states. Most of the shell companies were set up in Delhi (52 companies), followed by Karnataka (26 companies) and Haryana (19 companies). Most bank accounts were opened in Delhi (84), followed by Karnataka (37) and Maharashtra (26).
The racket also used eight payment gateways to defraud nearly Rs 200 crore. These include Razorpay, Easebuzz, PayU, Paytm, CashFree, WunderBaked, AgreePay, and Speedypay.
According to the ED, the scheme used by the scammers was to first lure victims to invest in the company through the app ‘HPZ Token’ on the pretext of doubling their investment. The scam was discovered in June 2021, after which the scammers stopped payments to investors and the website became inaccessible.
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