Indian Pluto exchange heads off with $270K in alleged exit scam

Digital currency exchange in India dubbed ‘Pluto’ has allegedly pulled an exit scam on its investors. Pluto exchange had promised the customers of high returns, which perhaps attracted them to deposit their money in the platform. At the moment, the Indian police have begun investigating the matter. Fake investment schemes have been acting as bugs to the massive growth of the cryptocurrency industry. 

Pluto exchange promised high returns

The Pluto exchange was based in New Delhi. During the time of operation, the exchange promised to reward investors with high monthly returns up to 30 percent, which is a very similar/common strategy mostly used by scammers to lure investors. Pluto exchange also claimed it was involved in cryptocurrency trading and mining via ‘F2poolminin.’

More like a pyramid scheme, the investors were reportedly asked to introduce more people for a higher reward. All these turned out to be fake as the exchange operators failed to deliver on their promise. The CEO of Pluto exchange, Bharat Verma, had blamed the falling price of Bitcoin as the reason why they haven’t paid out the rewards as promised.

Scam: a bug to crypto’s massive adoption

Verma made this known to one of the disgruntled investors, Joginder Kumar before the exchange exit scammed them. Reportedly, a total of 43 investors were victimized, and the operators of Pluto exchange headed away with $270,000. The local police have begun investigating the matter after the investors raised complaints against the exchange. 

Fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes are the more factors causing the slow adoption of digital currencies. Notably, Indian authorities still do not possess a solid and favorable stance on digital currencies. More incidents like this will only worsen the case in the country and could result in the introduction of more stringent regulations.

The exchange in question was first launched as a digital currency trading application in 2017. Pluto was migrated to Dubai after the platform began seeing a large investor base. When they relocated to Dubai, the exchange held about $6 million, which belonged to the investors.