Umesh Verma, 60, was previously arrested in 2017 in a gold smuggling case.
New Delhi:
A 60-year-old was arrested in Delhi for allegedly spearheading a scam that had scammed at least Rs2.5 crore out of some 45 people under the garb of being a cryptocurrency promoter. He was arrested by the Delhi Police Economic Crimes Wing upon arrival from Dubai, where he had fled in 2018, setting up a new business entirely, after defrauding people in India.
Umesh Verma, a former jeweler and greeting card creator, was arrested Thursday at Indira Gandhi International Airport in a case of fraud and embezzlement filed on September 18 this year, police said. He was also arrested early on December 17 by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence in a gold smuggling case.
In the cryptocurrency case, police allege, Verma, along with his son Bharat Verma and others, had induced hundreds to invest in a scheme that operated under the name Pluto Exchange, promising fixed monthly returns of between 20 and 30. percent.
His company, launched in November 2017 together with the company’s office in the capital’s upscale Connaught Place town, operated as a “fund of accounts,” police said. He allegedly issued units of a cryptocurrency called Coin Zarus in exchange for investments, assuring investors that the value of these units would multiply increase.
However, soon after, returns dried up and postdated checks issued by Verma’s firm began to be dishonored. Verma went unnoticed soon after and kept changing his residential address, eventually ending up in Dubai, where he began launching an essential commodities business.
A Joginder Sharma and others filed a complaint against him, based on which Verma, the sole owner of the Pluto Exchange, was arrested. The defendant is now in police custody for three days, according to a statement from OP Mishra, the joint commissioner of the economic crimes wing of the Delhi police.
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