The man whose book actor Shilpa Shetty tweeted on 7 July 2017 would go on to script one of the largest ponzi schemes India has seen. Amit Bhardwaj’s GainBitcoin scam, unearthed in 2018, and which has since ballooned to $2.7 billion, enticed people to invest by promising them high returns in a short time-frame, but it did so using a little-known form of digital money at the time—cryptocurrency. Bhardwaj carried out his swindle almost in full public view—his Twitter handle and promotions for his book were a big part of his sales pitch.
For a large number of Indians, the GainBitcoin scheme was when they first heard about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency; for thousands, it was how they lost their life’s savings. For the scammers who followed Bhardwaj, it became a case study in what not to do—draw attention to themselves— and know exactly how much money to scam. That’s not all. If there is more awareness about cryptocurrency today, the traps being set are equally more sophisticated. Let’s see how some of them work.
The fake crypto exchange
On 21 June, researchers at security firm CloudSEK revealed that a fake crypto exchange scam had duped Indians of more than ₹1,000 crore.
The scam began with scammers creating multiple fake domains online, which impersonated a legitimate UK-based crypto trading platform called CoinEgg. The researchers found the word…
