BitConnect Founder Indicted Over $2.4B Ponzi Scheme Has Vanished

Satish Kumbhani, the indicted founder of BitConnect, has vanished.   US authorities have no idea where he might be.

Kumbhani was charged with defrauding retail investors out of $2 billion through an unregistered offering of investments into a program involving digital assets.

According to the SEC's complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from early 2017 through January 2018, Defendants conducted a fraudulent and unregistered offering and sale of securities in the form of investments in a "Lending Program" offered by BitConnect. The complaint alleges that, to induce investors to deposit funds into the purported Lending Program, Defendants falsely represented, among other things, that BitConnect would deploy its purportedly proprietary "volatility software trading bot" that, using investors' deposits, would generate exorbitantly high returns. However, the SEC alleges that instead of deploying investor funds for trading with the purported trading bot, defendants BitConnect and Kumbhani siphoned investors' funds off for their own benefit by transferring those funds to digital wallet addresses controlled by them, their top promoter in the U.S., defendant Glenn Arcaro, and others. The SEC's complaint further alleges that BitConnect and Kumbhani established a network of promoters around the world, and rewarded them for their promotional efforts and outreach by paying commissions, a substantial portion of which they concealed from investors. According to the complaint, among these promoters was Arcaro, the lead national promoter of BitConnect for the United States who used the website he created, Future Money, to lure investors into the Lending Program.

"We allege that these defendants stole billions of dollars from retail investors around the world by exploiting their interest in digital assets," said Lara Shalov Mehraban, Associate Regional Director of SEC's New York Regional Office. "We will aggressively pursue and hold accountable those who engage in misconduct in the digital asset space."

The SEC believes Kumbhani likely relocated from India to an unknown address in a different country.

“Since November, the Commission has been consulting with that country’s financial regulatory authorities in an attempt to locate Kumbhani’s address. At present, however, Kumbhani’s location remains unknown, and the Commission remains unable to state when its efforts to locate him will be successful, if at all,” the agency told Judge John Koeltl in its February 28 filing.

- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com