Hello Friends

Yesterday an interesting but equally worrying news came regarding Bitcoins in India.

 

A businessman from Dehradun, Uttarakhand had reported about his abduction and loot by the "Bitcoin Gang". This is probably the first ever case of loot and abduction for Bitcoins, a digital currency which is still not legalized in India and has very less chances to be legalized in future also.

Here is what actually happened:

The incident happened in April 2017 and the victim businessman reported it to crime branch in August 2017. Most probably he was unsure whether to report this crime or not, as Bitcoin is not legal in India, and Govt. has already said that it will not take any responsibility for Bitcoin related crimes and that citizens should avoid Bitcoins and related cryptos until further notice.

This news has only surfaced yesterday after the convicts have been finally caught. 

Yes, yes I am telling what actually happened. 

So this anonymous businessman posted a requirement of Bitcoins worth around $55000 on localbitcoins.com, a site which enables person to person exchange of Bitcoins/fiat in the same region or country. As most of you can imagine this is indeed a big amount in India. A seller then contacted this businessman to sell Bitcoins. Businessman wanted to pay online, but the seller convinced him to pay in cash, by offering him a discount. I am sure the seller would have also given the reason of tax evade and privacy from Govt!!! The seller was a young girl doing her graduation and this would have also made the businessman to go for physical transaction, rather than a safer online one! 

India's most popular vehicle for kidnapping!

Well, anyways the guy packs his $55000 (in INR and it amounts to around INR 3600000) in a briefcase and goes to meet this lady. The lady along with her boyfriend has already set the trap for this businessman. As soon as he meets this lady, an armed gang abducts this businessman and loot all the fiat from him!!!! And of course they gave him some good beating, punch marks, purple eyes and good old killing threats if he tells about this incident to anyone!!!

Now yesterday, when this "Bitcoin Gang" was finally caught, some more surprises were revealed.

 

The masked ones are the girl and her boyfriend

This gang was actually divided into 3 parts. The first part was the young lady and her boyfriend who looked for wealthy people on sites like localbitcoins. Then they would call their target, meet him and forward him to the second group of gang. This group would be armed and take the target to the third group. The third group would actually loot the target and threaten him. After investigation it was also revealed that not only they looted the fiat from their victims, but also forced them to transfer their Bitcoins to the gang's Bitcoin accounts. I think this is probably the first case where physical hacking of Bitcoins was done. Until now, we only heard about phishing, ransomware etc. But dacoits looting Bitcoins physically from their victims is never heard of until now, at least not in India. This gang had looted at least 2 people before this businessman, but they never reported, most probably because they had tax evaded money also known as black money. Anarchists be aware, it's not just the govt. who is after you, but also bad elements like "Bitcoin Gang"!!

Crypto discussion govt. committee

The good thing is that these people were caught, but the bad thing is that it will show Bitcoin in negative light. A govt. which is already in no mood to legalize Bitcoin might take some strict actions against Bitcoins and other cryptos. Last I heard was that a high level Govt. committee is discussing whether to ban cryptos in India or not, and one of the main cryptos being discussed among them was Steem!!! Although their main concern is over coins like Bitcoins, which do not have any single authority to contact.

But whatever be the case, I think we all should learn one (maybe more) thing from this incident. 

• And that is to always prefer exchanging cryptos via legit exchanges or wallets. Like Unocoin wallet in India and coinbase in most other countries. 
• And if you want to transact using sites like localbitcoins, then only do the online transactions. Never meet the seller physically or even give them your home/office address.
• Not showing off your digital assets on internet or offline is also a great idea.

Vitalik AKA ETH founder

• If you have finally reached a point where you have amassed quite a lot of cryptos and the word has reached out, then along with securing your online accounts, computer etc, it might be worth securing yourself physically also. Especially if you are someone like Vitalik!!!! Ned, Dan; I guess it's time for Z plus security!!!

These were some ideas what I think can save you and your Bitcoins physically, but if you have better ideas then feel free to share them. Also let us know, if you have heard about such incidents, gangs in your country, who abduct people and loot their Bitcoins or other cryptos.  As my regular readers might be aware, I always upvote and give 100 POCKET tokens to all my commentors who make post related quality comments.

Thanking You

Siddartha Gupta

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