The Karnataka Police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Special Investigation Team (SIT) arrested Srikrishna Ramesh, also known as Sriki, aged 29, on Monday night for his involvement in a 2017 case where bitcoins valued at Rs.1.14 crore were stolen from the Unocoin Technologies platform. The arrest followed a complaint from the company's co-founder, Harish BV, to the Tumakuru New Extension police station on July 17, 2017.
The complaint detailed the theft of 60.6 bitcoins through hacking on June 23, 2017. Furthermore, the CID SIT uncovered alleged bribery involving a director of the cryptocurrency exchange, who reportedly paid Rs.7 lakh to a Bengaluru police officer to recover the stolen bitcoins after Sriki's initial arrest by the Crime Branch in November 2020.
Scrutiny of CCTV footage from a guesthouse where Sriki was illegally detained revealed that he had been using a laptop while in police custody. The recovery of this laptop in October 2023 yielded crucial leads, as per sources. According to court documents filed by the SIT following the arrest of officer Prashant Babu on January 24, co-founder Harish purportedly made payments to him.
The SIT was established by the Congress government on June 30, 2023, shortly after assuming power in May 2023. Allegations of police confiscating a significant amount of crypto currency from Sriki's crypto wallets in 2020 during the BJP's tenure in Karnataka are connected to the Bitcoin scam.
Court filings by both the crime branch and the SIT suggest that the services of Unocoin founders were extensively used in the Crime Branch's efforts to recover Bitcoin from Sriki. In chargesheets filed by the Crime Branch, Sriki himself claimed that he was coerced into surrendering all crypto currency in his possession to the police.
