Indian-origin man indicted in cryptocurrency scam

A 27-year-old Indian-origin man along with two other co-founders of a start-up cryptocurrency company have been indicted with a scheme to defraud investors, with authorities seizing digital currency worth more than USD 60 million raised from their victims.

Sohrab Sharma, Raymond Trapani and Robert Farkas were the three co-founders of a start-up company called Centra Tech.

A grand jury in the Southern District of New York returned an indictment charging the three with conspiring to commit securities and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to induce victims to invest millions of dollars’ worth of digital funds for the purchase of unregistered securities, in the form of digital currency tokens issued by Centra.

The three men were arrested last month based on criminal complaints charging them with the same crimes, Attorney for the United States Robert Khuzami said.

Following their arrests, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized 91,000 Ether units, consisting of digital funds raised from victims as part of the charged scheme. This seized digital currency is presently worth more than USD 60 million.

“As alleged, the defendants conspired to capitalise on investor interest in the burgeoning cryptocurrency market. They allegedly made false claims about their product and about relationships they had with credible financial institutions, even creating a fictitious Centra Tech CEO,” Khuzami said.