The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Odisha police has uncovered a pan-India cryptocurrency-based Ponzi scheme, involving money of more than Rs 1000 crore, a police official said on Monday.
Gurtej Sigh Sidhu (40), the head of STA Crypto Token, was arrested from Sri-Ganganagar, Rajasthan, and its Odisha unit head Nirod Das was also arrested. Sidhu is a native of Faridkot, Punjab, and Nirod belongs to Bhadrak district of Odisha.
The EOW team, led by DSP Sasmita Sahoo, was tracking his movement and arrested him. Acting on an intelligence input, the EOW conducted an enquiry and found that STA, through some upline members, was very active in districts like Bhadrak, Balasore, Bhubaneswar, Mayurbhanj, Jajpur, Kendrapada and Keonjhar.
The STA website is hosted from Iceland but its operations are limited to India only.