India News | CBI Files Chargesheet in Case Involving Online Cheating of Canadian Citizen
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. The CBI has filed a chargesheet against a Delhi-resident who allegedly posed as a Canadian government official and coerced his targets into transferring their assets to crypto wallets, before siphoning those off with his accomplices, officials said on Tuesday.
New Delhi, Oct 3 (PTI) The CBI has filed a chargesheet against a Delhi-resident who allegedly posed as a Canadian government official and coerced his targets into transferring their assets to crypto wallets, before siphoning those off with his accomplices, officials said on Tuesday.
The agency has named Sahil Pal, Himanshu and Ashish Bhambhani as the accused in its chargesheet filed under the Indian Penal Code sections related to criminal conspiracy, cheating and extortion, besides provisions of the Information Technology Act, they said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had booked the trio on May 11 on inputs from Canadian authorities, the officials said.
Pal has approached a special court seeking default bail, claiming that since the chargesheet was not filed within 60 days of his arrest, he is eligible for the relief.
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The federal agency had booked the trio for allegedly posing as Canadian government officials to cheat Quebec-based Trishan Goussard in September last year.
They allegedly asked Goussard to deposit CAD 7,006 (around Rs 4.35 lakh at present exchange rates) in a crypto wallet to avoid several fraud charges in his compromised social insurance number, the agency has said.
An unsuspecting Goussard deposited the amount through Bitcoin ATM. The wallet was last active on the Binance application through an IP address that had 103 instances of logs linked to a mobile phone number registered in the name of Bhambani, it has alleged.
"Their modus operandi involved providing fake technical support consultation to unsuspecting victims and coercing them into transferring cryptocurrency funds. These ill-gotten cryptocurrency assets were subsequently routed through multiple crypto wallets, ultimately ending up in the perpetrators' crypto accounts," a CBI spokesperson said.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)