SEC is unable to locate the founder of BitConnect, who was convicted in a $2.4 billion fraud case

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Following his conviction, BitConnect founder Satish Kumbhani remains untraced, having been indicted by the United States Department of Justice in a $2.4 billion Ponzi scheme.

The whereabouts of Kumbhani are unknown, according to a court filing on Monday. His last known location was in India, but he has gone untraced since the SEC charged BitConnect’s promoter for defrauding investors of more than $2 billion.

In its registration, the SEC noted that the convicted founder is most likely gone abroad and “Kumbhani’s location is unknown, and the Commission is unable to say when it will be able to find him, if at all.” The founder stands accused of wire fraud, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and three conspiracies:

The BitConnect saga dates back to the early days of cryptocurrency, when it was one of the most popular and discussed concepts. The crypto initiative was established in 2016 and became a worldwide phenomenon by mid-2017 as it gathered billions of dollars from all around the world. The project claimed to provide investors with a lending program based on its proprietary “trading

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Kumbhani for operating a Ponzi scheme through BitConnect’s lending program, which stole $2.4 billion from investors. During the peak of the market mania in December 2017, bitconnect’s native currency BCC hit an all-time high trading price of $463.31 and a

The organization’s founders rug pulled the project in January 2018, causing the token’s value to fall close to zero and resulting in significant losses for investors.

BitConnect (BCC) price history. Source: CoinMarketCap

The DoJ also charged Kumbhani with running a Ponzi scheme, claiming he set up a phony market demand for BCC to entice more unsophisticated investors. The initiative, like many others in the ICO era, was revealed to be a massive pyramid scheme in which the creators used early investments to pay off previous investors and then fled.

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