More arrests have been made in the case of a murdered Bitcoin scam leader in India. Mohammad Yasin, a first year MBA student in a city institute, was arrested on a charge of offering shelter to the five men already arrested on suspicion of murdering Abdul Shakoor, the 35-year-old kingpin of a Rs 450 crore ($62.35 million) Bitcoin scam who was found dead in a hospital car park in August.
Shakoor Murdered After Business Failed
Shakoor’s murder has made headlines all across India, and has revealed the existence of one of the country’s biggest crypto scams. The first the country knew about the case was on August 28 when news broke that a body had been found in the back seat of a car in the parking lot of a private hospital in Dehradun, north India. It didn’t take police long to identify the victim as Shakoor, as well as the fact that he was the leader of a multi-million-dollar scam that involved convincing residents of three towns, Pandikkad, Manjeri, and Malappuram in Kerala, to invest in Bitcoin through Shakoor and his team of representatives. Just two days after the discovery of the body, police released details of the background to the murder, stating that Shakoor suffered losses in the business and “escaped to Dehradun as people who had invested in bitcoins through his associates began chasing them for their money.” They tracked him down and tried to torture his Bitcoin wallet password out of him, until he lost consciousness, at which point they “took him to two hospitals in the city…but when doctors at both facilities declared him dead, they fled leaving his body behind.”
India’s Bitcoin Scam History
Faris Mamnoon, Arvind C, Asif Ali, Sufail Mukhtar, and Aftab Mohammad were all swiftly arrested by police, with five more associates wanted by police, Yasin among them. Yasin was arrested after travelling to Dehradun to turn himself in, bringing the number of associates sought down to four. India has known its fair share of crypto scams, including the $14 million Cashcoin scam; the RegalCoin scam set up by BitConnect India promoter Divyesh Darji; and the ongoing search for OneCoin foundr Dr Ruja Ignatova, who is one of 30 wanted by Indian police in relation to the project.
