PUNE: Cryptocurrencies worth Rs6 crore were seized from the e-wallet of former IPS officer Ravindra Patil during investigations, while the arrested cyber expert Pankaj Ghode was being questioned to trace how many virtual currencies he had siphoned off.
Deputy commissioner of police (cyber) Bhagyashri Navatake told TOI, “While investigating the case, we identified the e-wallets of Patil. Many cryptocurrencies were stashed in them. After identifying the different cryptocurrencies in his e-wallets, we transferred some cryptocurrencies, worth Rs6 crore, to the e-wallet of the Pune police.”
Navatake said, “We may recover more cryptocurrencies. We have established the block chain evidence in the case and the seizures were made thereafter..”
The cyber police arrested Patil and Ghode for allegedly cheating the “investigators” of the cryptocurrency frauds in the city. They would be in police custody till March 25. A city court revoked the provisions of the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act invoked against them by the police.
According to the police, Patil and Ghode were roped in to assist Pune police in cracking cryptocurrency cases in which many people were allegedly cheated by Amit Bharadwaj and others. Two cases were filed against Bharadwaj and his accomplices at Dattawadi and Nigdi police stations in 2018.
According to the police, the cryptocurrencies recovered from the accused in Dattawadi and Nigdi police station cases were transferred to the e-wallets of Patil and Ghode. The duo manipulated the screenshots of those transactions and gave them to the police as proof.
The police claimed that the analysis of blockchain revealed that while transferring the cryptocurrencies to the police’s e-wallet, Patil and Ghode transferred some virtual currencies to their e-wallets instead of diverting all of them to the police’s e-wallet.
