Pune police chargesheet cyber experts accused of siphoning off Bitcoins while helping in Ponzi scam probe

The investigation officer of the case, Inspector Ankush Chintaman, on Monday filed a 4,400-page chargesheet against Ghode and Patil before a magistrate court in Pune.

Following a probe that began in April 2021, the Pune City police’s Cyber Crime Cell had on March 12 this year arrested two cyber crime experts Pankaj Ghode, 38, and Ravindranath Patil, a 45-year-old ex-IPS officer of the 2004 batch of Jammu and Kashmir cadre. Ghode and Patil had helped a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Pune police in their probe of two cases of the Bitcoin Ponzi scheme in 2018.

The arrest of Ghode and Patil was a result of a probe involving detailed work on cyber forensics by a team of select officials and personnel led by Deputy Commissioner of Police Bhagyashree Navatake. The probe revealed that Ghode and Patil had diverted a significant chunk of cryptocurrency funds from the wallets used by the accused in the 2018 cases, to their own and their accomplices’ wallets.

The two are alleged to have prepared forged screenshots of the blockchain wallets to funnel the cryptocurrency. From the 17 accused arrested in the 2018 case, the Pune police had, with the help of Ghode and Patil, seized 241.46 bitcoins, 452 bitcoin cash units, and 94 Ethereum units.

Patil and Ghode are currently in judicial custody in Yerawada Central Jail in Pune. Officials have said that Patil left the IPS a couple of years after joining it. Since then, he has been working as a cyber crime expert and has assisted various police entities and investigating agencies in their probes. He has also conducted training the police and other agencies on various aspects of crimes related to cryptocurrency in the recent past. Ghode has also worked as a cyber expert in the past and operated multiple firms including some based abroad, an official said.

The police have so far traced as many as 237 bitcoins to the wallets linked to the accused. Prima facie, this chunk of cryptocurrency is from what was seized from the accused in the 2018 cases. The probe suggests that Patil was also involved in crypto trading.

So far, the police have seized from the accused Rs 6 crore worth of 34 different cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, Ripple etc. The police are also probing a discrepancy of 900 bitcoins in the reports submitted by the accused when they helped the police in the 2018 investigation. At a later stage in the probe, the police also booked Patil’s wife and brother in the case, but they have not been chargesheeted.

The Enforcement Directorate has recently sought information from Pune police for probing the money laundering on the part of Patil and Ghode.

In 2018, an SIT of the Pune police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) investigated two of the several offences linked to a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme registered in the country at the time. Among the 17 people arrested by the Pune police were the masterminds and brothers Amit and Vivek Bharadwaj. The brothers, through their multiple companies, are alleged to have cheated thousands of people across India by promising high returns on cryptocurrency investments. Amit Bharadwaj was granted bail by the Supreme Court in 2019 and is said to have died of an illness earlier this year. At one point in time, the amount linked to cases against Bharadwaj and accomplices was pegged at 87,000 bitcoins.

Amit Bharadwaj and his accomplices were booked in multiple cases by the police across India and they also face money laundering charges brought by the Enforcement Directorate. Two of these pan India ca