A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probing the Bitcoin scam on Monday night arrested alleged hacker Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki, who was earlier arrested by the Crime Branch in November 2020.
Sriki, 29, was arrested from a hotel in Bengaluru in a 2017 case where Rs 1.14-crore worth Bitcoins were stolen from Unocoin Technologies platform, following which its cofounder Harish BV lodged a complaint with the Tumakuru New Extension police station on July 17, 2017.
According to the complaint, 60.6 Bitcoins were stolen by unknown people in a hacking that occurred on June 23, 2017. In the Unocoin case, a director of the cryptocurrency exchange is alleged to have paid Rs 7 lakh to a Bengaluru police officer to recover the stolen Bitcoins after Sriki’s arrest, the CID SIT had found.
Four former Central Crime Branch (CCB) officials were earlier named as accused in the case for attempting to hack various cryptocurrency wallets, payment gateways, and stock exchange websites with the help of Sriki.
“We will take him (Sriki) to custody for further questioning and investigation in the case,” a senior police officer said.
The analysis of CCTV footage from a guesthouse where Sriki was held in illegal custody revealed that the hacker was using a laptop while in police custody and the recovery of the laptop in October 2023 provided vital clues, sources said.
Co-founder Harish purportedly paid the sum to Crime Branch officer Prashant Babu, the SIT stated in court filings after the arrest of the officer on January 24.
The Congress government constituted the SIT on June 30, 2023, soon after it came to power in May 2023.
The Bitcoin scam from the tenure of the BJP in Karnataka involves allegations of police grabbing a large cache of the cryptocurrency that was found in the crypto wallets of Sriki in 2020. The services of the Unocoin founders were used extensively in the Crime Branch investigations to recover Bitcoin found in Sriki’s possession according to court filings by the Crime Branch and the SIT.
Sriki himself had said in police statements that are on record in chargesheets filed by the Crime Branch that he was forced to hand over all crypto currency in his possession to the police.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 07-05-2024 at 15:53 IST
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