A Dimapur court has declared Bhupesh Arora, the kingpin of the Rs 2,200 crore crypto currency racket by the name of HPZ Token, a fugitive under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA).
The declaration allows the government to confiscate all the assets of Arora, who is said to have fled to Dubai.
In an order passed on Wednesday, the court of Justice N Longshithung Ezung in Dimapur allowed an application filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that Arora be declared a ‘fugitive economic offender’ and his properties be confiscated.
The HPZ Token scam is an alleged investment scam run by Delhi-based Bhupesh Arora where investors were promised huge gains through crypto currency transactions. Most of its victims were found to be in Nagaland and Assam. Based on a Nagaland police FIR, ED began its probe in 2022. Later, Assam police and CBI too registered FIRs.
ED probe has found that money in the scam was swindled through more than 140 shell companies and 200 bank accounts across 20 states. Most of the shell companies were opened in Delhi (52), followed by Karnataka (26) and Haryana (19). Most of the bank accounts were opened in Delhi (84), followed by Karnataka (37) and Maharashtra (26).
The racket also used eight payment gateways to swindle close to Rs 200 crore. These included Razorpay, Easebuzz, PayU, Paytm, CashFree, WunderBaked, AgreePay and Speedypay.
According to ED, the modus operandi adopted by the fraudsters was to first lure the victims to invest in the company on the pretext of doubling their investment through the app HPZ Token. The scam came to light in June 2021 and subsequently the fraudsters stopped the payments to the investors and the website became inaccessible.
-Agencies