In a court statement, the US SEC admitted that it did not know the place of residence of Satish Kumbhani, the founder of the infamous Ponzi BitConnect scheme.
Indicted by the US Department of Justice for a $ 2.4 billion Ponzi scheme, BitConnect founder Satish Kumbhani remains untraceable after sentencing. In a recent court statement, the Securities and Exchange Commission admitted that Kumbhani’s whereabouts remain unknown today. The SEC said Kumbhani's last known location was his native India, but no one has any idea where the promoter of the Ponzi BitConnect scheme, accused of defrauding US investors worth more than $ 2 billion, is found today. In his filing, the SEC noted that Kumbhani most likely fled to a foreign country: “Kumbhani's location remains unknown. The Commission cannot say with certainty if and when he will be located. " The founder of BitConnect was charged with telematics fraud, running an unlicensed money transmission business, commodity price manipulation and international money laundering. The BitConnect saga dates back to the ICO era: at the time it was among the most popular and discussed projects. Founded in 2016, by mid-2017 BitConnect had become a truly global phenomenon, raising billions of dollars from investors around the world. The project promised a lending program based on “trading bots” and “volatility software,” offering 10% of the earnings to investors via the BCC token. The Justice Department accused Kumbhani of running a Ponzi scheme through the BitConnect loan program, managing to steal a whopping 2.4 billion dollars from its victims. At the peak of the bull market in December 2017, the native token - BCC - hit a record price of $ 463.31 per unit and a market cap of $ 3.4 billion. The following month, in January 2018, we witnessed the rug pull: the value of the token dropped to zero, causing huge losses to investors. BitConnect (BCC) price history. Source: CoinMarketCap The DOJ also accused Kumbhani of creating false market demand for BCC to attract unsuspecting investors. The project - like many others in the ICO era - turned out to be a huge pyramid scheme, in which the founders used newly obtained funds to pay off old investors. After raising billions of dollars by exploiting the ICO hype of the time, the criminals have disappeared into thin air. Several promoters of the project, both in Australia and in the United States, have already been sentenced and face jail time.