The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Shimla Office, on Monday conducted search operations at the premises of Vijay Juneja and Masoom Juneja under Section 17(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in connection with a Rs 500-crore cryptocurrency scam. During the searches, the ED recovered incriminating documents and digital devices related to the case.
According to the ED, funds collected from investors were routed to Vijay Kumar Juneja and Masoom Juneja.
Upon receiving the cash, they allegedly used the funds to acquire immovable properties, where the registered values were significantly lower than the actual consideration paid. This arrangement enabled a substantial portion of the transaction value to be settled in cash and facilitated the laundering of funds generated through the illegal scheme.
Statements recorded under Section 50 of the PMLA from various individuals indicated that cash was handed over to Vijay and Masoom on behalf of Subhash Sharma, the alleged mastermind behind the scam.
Investigations also revealed that Vijay and Masoom were nominees in several accounts held in the names of employees, indicating their effective control over these accounts. These accounts were allegedly used for layering and concealing the proceeds of crime.
Further, Masoom Juneja was arrested under Section 19(1) of the PMLA, 2002, as part of efforts to ascertain the total quantum of proceeds of crime generated and integrated through the cryptocurrency fraud.
The development comes in connection with a major cryptocurrency scam in which the ED initiated an investigation based on FIRs registered by the Himachal Pradesh and Punjab police against Subhash Sharma and several others.
The investigation revealed that in 2018, Subhash Sharma, in connivance with co-accused Hem Raj, Sukhdev Thakur, Abhishek Sharma and Radhika Sharma, launched a cryptocurrency-based multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme through an online platform to facilitate controlled operations and large-scale investor enrolment.
The platform was later shifted to foreign servers hosted by DigitalOcean and operated through domains such as korvio.io and voscrow.com to run the scheme.
The accused allegedly induced the public to invest in “Korvio Coin (KRO)” by promising assured high returns, conducting misleading seminars, manipulating token values and introducing new tokens to sustain a Ponzi structure, wherein funds from new investors were used to pay returns to earlier investors.
To conceal their activities, digital records and domains were deleted. However, recovered data revealed that more than 2.48 lakh users fell victim to the fraud, with total transactions exceeding USD 219 million. The scam allegedly caused losses of around Rs 500 crore to investors.
The accused allegedly carried out extensive layering by routing funds through numerous bank accounts, fictitious firms and intermediaries, while converting a portion of the proceeds into cryptocurrency to obscure the audit trail.
After the scam came to light, Subhash Sharma reportedly fled to Dubai in an attempt to evade prosecution.
