The court ordered India’s Ministry of Communication to move against as many as 38 websites.

Cryptocurrency exchange Mudrex won a court order asking India’s Ministry of Communication to take down as many as 38 websites using the company’s name to carry out scams.

The Delhi High Court’s Aug. 23 judgement, passed within a day of the petition, gives the ministry a week to comply. The ministry, the designated authority to take down fake websites, did not immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for comment.

Mudrex approached the court after around 15 people contacted customer support or came to its office in Bengaluru to say that they had been scammed.

“We estimate the actual number of retail investors scammed could be 1,000, and the estimated loss could be in excess of about $50,000,” Mudrex CEO and co-founder Edul Patel said in an interview.

Scammers impersonating Mudrex employees on messaging service Telegram would lure retail investors by promising rewards and work opportunities if they performed certain tasks, including writing Google reviews. They also used fake websites under the Mudrex name and “invited the general public to invest on these websites, collecting monies from them illegally and frequently,” the court order said.

Amit Rangari, Mudrex’s legal head said the police complaint was filed in Bengaluru on March 23, well before prominent cryptocurrency exchange WazirX suffered a $234 million hack. The July exploit cost WazirX almost 45% of customer funds and the company has since been struggling to find solutions.

“We don’t know if any action was taken after our police complaint,” Patel told CoinDesk. “Because people continued to get scammed in the months following we decided to take a more formal approach, a direct line of communication with the ministry, and the only way we can get that is if we had a High Court order.”

Asked if this could add to the nervousness among Indian retailers after the WazirX hack Patel said that he hoped “it works more in our favor, than against it.”

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Source: Vietnam Insider

Mudrex is a Y-Combinator-backed, California-headquartered entity with a subsidiary registered with the Intelligence Unit of India.

Indian cryptocurrency investment platform Mudrex plans to offer U.S. spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to institutional and retail investors in India, CEO and co-founder Edul Patel said.

“This is much more valuable to institutions, as this was already available to retailers,” Patel said in an interview with CoinDesk. Retail clients in the country could access spot-bitcoin ETFs through U.S. stock investing companies, but “as far as we know” we are the first in India to offer this service to institutions, Patel said. “We are certainly the first Indian crypto platform to offer this service.”

In the first phase, Mudrex will list four spot ETFs – BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton and Vanguard.

Mudrex, which is backed by Y-Combinator and based in California, has a subsidiary registered with the Intelligence Unit of India. It also has a toehold in the European Union, with licenses in Lithuania and Italy. The firm will ensure the processing of the actual transaction through broker partners in the U.S., while the Indian subsidiary will facilitate the spof-bitcoin ETF service, Patel told CoinDesk.

The development is unprecedented because India’s crypto regulatory environment is divided between the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the government led by the Finance Ministry. The RBI has been staunchly against crypto, also stating recently that India doesn’t need to emulate the U.S. on its position around crypto ETFs because its economy cannot afford such risk. However, the Finance Ministry’s Intelligence Unit has registered more than two dozen Indian crypto service providers and imposed stiff taxes on the sector. While the two agree on the need to protect the Indian economy and investors, their regulatory focus can appear to differ.

“The bitcoin spot ETF works as a security and Indians are allowed to purchase securities under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) and, as a result, users or institutions specifically, who do want to get access to bitcoin can now start using the bitcoins through ETFs to diversify their portfolio,” Patel said.

The LRS simplifies overseas investments for Indians. The overall LRS limit, as prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India, is $250,000 a year. Mudrex will facilitate investing in spot bitcoin ETFs on its platform with a minimum investment of $5,000 and a maximum of $250,000.

“The LRS is the tricky part for most people and over there (in the U.S.), because we also have strong banking relationships, we’re able to help users do these transactions in a very seamless way, and that’s why these services are important,” Patel said.

Patel also said that among the 350 institutions that work with the company, about 20 have initiated the process of joining and he expects volumes with the average ticket size of $110,000.

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Source: Vietnam Insider