Once again, from the rabbit hole of court cases, I bring you a curious tale of two businessmen seeking loans to expand their business and one loan provider who asked them to buy bitcoin and allegedly stole it from them.

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In October 2020, Suraj Suryawanshi and his friend Nagnath Parkale met Hitesh Bulde at Natraj Hotel in Swargate, Pune.

Suryawanshi is in the garments business while Parkale is into real estate. Hitesh Bulde was going to arrange a loan of INR 5 crore ($627k) for them. Both men wanted the loan to expand their respective businesses and connected with Bulde via mutual acquaintances.

Bulde told them to provide certain securities for the loan in form of property documents and cheques. He asked for INR 25000 ($310) in cash from both.

Bulde also asked them to download an Indian Cryptocurrency exchange ZebPay to buy 1-2 bitcoins as securities as well.

Both paid INR 25000 via online payment transfer quickly to seal the deal.

After a few days, Suryawanshi called Bulde to tell him he had purchased 1 bitcoin on ZebPay but Parkale had a cash crunch so he could not buy it completely yet.

Bulde suggested he can help Suryawanshi transfer some bitcoin to Parkale to make his total holding 1 bitcoin. Suryawanshi agreed.

Bulde asked for an OTP from Suryawanshi, which he promptly gave. Soon, Suryawanshi’s account worth INR 1016911 was emptied and Bulde claimed that the bitcoin was sent to Parkale by accident.

He said he made a mistake and that he will send back the funds after deducting what Parkale needed. Bulde then called Parkale under the excuse that he needs to send back the funds to Suryawanshi so he will need an OTP from Parkale.

Parkale gave him the OTP under the understanding that Bulde will send the funds back to Suryawanshi. Soon, Parkale’s account worth INR 734351 was emptied too.

All in all, INR 1751262 (~$22000) worth of bitcoins were removed from their accounts.

Bulde now claims that the bitcoin went to an unknown account. He doesn’t know who it went to.

Bulde assured them that the transaction would be reversed and they would get their money back. But even after a few days, the money was not returned. Bulde kept giving false assurances. After a while, he started threatening and abusing.

Ultimately, Suryawanshi filed an FIR against Bulde.

Aftermath

Bulde approached the Bombay High Court for anticipatory bail against Surywanshi’s FIR, the court rejected his application on March 09, 2021.

Honourable Justice Sarang Kotwal said in his order,

I have considered these submissions. The FIR clearly spells out the case against the present Applicant(Bulde). The Applicant had taken OTP from the informant(Suryawanshi) as well as from Parkale and had used that OTP to transfer their entire amount kept in Zebpay account. This was done without permission of the informant or of his friend Parkale. Both of them were kept in dark. The amount was transferred to some unknown account. The Applicant is directly responsible and he has deliberately committed the offence. To find out money trail and the Applicant’s involvement in the larger conspiracy, his custodial interrogation is necessary. No case for anticipatory bail is made out. The application is rejected.

The police filed a charge sheet against Hitesh Bulde later. There is no update on the case since.

If you enjoyed this story, you might love to read some more of these hidden stories here:

1. His Account was Frozen, Police came after him, as he sold bitcoin to a Scammer by Accident. He was being investigated for defrauding an IELTS aspirant to the tune of INR 11,78,000 (~$16000) in a period between February and March 2021. Read more.

2. On 6-6-22, Selvakumar went missing. When he was found, he said he lost his savings to a “bitcoin game”. Read more.

Source of the story: Bombay High Court

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