Mumbai: The Thane sessions court on Friday remanded 18 people accused in the ‘one coin’ scam in police custody after Navi Mumbai police filed a revision petition on Wednesday challenging the order by the Thane Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) that had remanded the arrested accused in judicial custody on Monday.
DCP (Crime Branch) Dileep Sawant said, “We need police custody for investigating the case and to get all details of the scam. We have got custody of the accused till May 3.”
The case, presently with the Economic Offence Wing (EOW)-I, will get a new investigation team comprising four officers and 10 personnel. “I have been asked to form the team and will be picking those with experience in such cases,” Senior PI Shivaji Awate, EOW-I, said.
The accused were arrested by Navi Mumbai police on April 23, after Commissioner of Police Hemant Nagrale, Joint Commissioner of Police Madhukar Pandey, Mr Sawant and other police officers posed as participants of a seminar of the alleged Ponzi Scheme. The scheme involved investing money on ‘crypto currency’ in the name of ‘One Coin’ wherein participants were promised returns from 2018 onwards.
The company had offered packages for investment starting from ₹11,900 to ₹27 lakh. It is not registered with the RBI and crypto currency is not recognised in India, which led the police to suspect fraud.
Around 76 people had invested around ₹56 lakh in the scheme after attending the previous seminar.
