Ten police officers in the Indian state of Gujurat have been accused by the Crime Investigation Department (CID) for crimes ranging from abduction, attempted extortion, and corruption after allegedly kidnapping a man and forcing him to transfer 200 bitcoin.
In a report from the Times of India, the CID branch filed a First Information Report (FIR) against 11 individals – 10 of which were police officers and one civilian – on Sunday. In it it states that the accused were nine constables and one local town police inspector, by the name of Anant Patel.
The report goes on to state that the accused in three police vehicles had kidnapped Shailesh Bhatt, Kirit Paladiya, and Bhatt’s driver Mahipal on the 14 February. They were then taken to a farmhouse where they were beaten and forced to transfer the requested bitcoin. They were then released the following day once confirmation had been received that the cryptocurrency had been transferred. At today’s price for bitcoin, at $6,768, according to CoinMarketCap, that puts that figure at over $1.3 million.
It’s also reported that another figure had to be paid in order for the bitcoin to be returned.
News of this comes at a time when there has been an increasing number of arrests involving incidents with the cryptocurrency market in India.
Last week, it was reported that Amit Bharadwaj from GBMiners, and his brother, had been arrested for allegedly duping thousands of investors out of $300 million through bitcoin-based Ponzi schemes. At the time, it was reported that the two had cheated 8,000 investors out of $300 million.
Yet with the cryptocurrency market still presenting an attractive means of generating some extra money there are more people turning their attention to it regardless of the measures they employ to get what they want.
So much so, that two former employees of the Crimean government office were fined 30,000 rubles ($530) for illegally mining cryptocurrencies through the government’s computing network in March. Last month also saw an employee from Florida’s Department of Citrus being arrested after using state computing power to mine for digital currencies.
While these are only a few of the examples circulating it highlights the issue that the market is being faced with as people think of ways they can extort coins for themselves.
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