ED seizes crypto assets worth Rs 2385 crore, mastermind Powell arrested in Spain

Enforcement Directorate (ED) has taken major action in OctaFX Forex scam. The investigating agency seized crypto assets worth ₹2,385 crore (about $1.8 billion). According to ED, the mastermind of the scam, Pavel Prozorov, was arrested by the Spanish police. He is accused of cyber fraud in many countries. This case started with an FIR registered at Shivaji Nagar Police Station, Pune. The allegation was that people were defrauded of a lot of money under the pretext of providing foreign exchange trading service under the name OctaFX. The company was doing forex trading in India without RBI approval. The ED investigation revealed that between July 2022 and April 2023, OctaFX defrauded Indian investors of about ₹1,875 crore (about $1.8 billion) and made profits of about ₹8 billion (about $1.8 billion). Between 2019 and 2024, the company made more than ₹5,000 crore (about $1.5 billion) in profits from India, much of which was repatriated abroad. International Fraud Network OctaFX created companies in various countries to hide its activities. These included marketing from the British Virgin Islands, servers and back office operations from Spain, payment gateways from Estonia, technical support from a holding company in Cyprus, Georgia, Indian operations from Dubai and money transfers under the guise of fraud services from Singapore. Investment Fraud Scheme The company first won the trust of investors by promising small profits. Then they cheated investors by showing fake trading cards and technical errors. OctaFX also operated an Introducing Broker (IB) scheme, in which people were paid commission for referring others. The whole operation was like a Ponzi scheme. Money Laundering: Money was collected from investors through UPI and bank transfer. They were then transferred to dummy companies. This money was then transferred abroad through illegal payment channels under the guise of e-commerce transactions or importing software services. All these foreign companies were controlled by the same mastermind, Pavel Prozorov. Share this story Tags