Hacker Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki maintained a low profile and did not use mobile phones or a bank account. To benefit from his illicit gains, he employed the services of his friend Robin Khandelwal, according to the investigation carried out by CCB.
In the charge sheet filed before the first additional chief metropolitan magistrate court, bitcoins and other currencies gained by Sriki through hacking were transferred to the wallets owned by Robin.
The latter subsequently sold them to other customers and gave cash to Sriki, who provided Robin a commission for each of the bitcoins sold.
Sriki claims to have given bitcoins exceeding Rs 8 crore till date. The notorious hacker told the police that he had “various private keys in my cloud account” and sought access to the same to “give back all the stolen bitcoins”.
Police suspect that the transactions between the two far exceeded the claims made by them.
The charge sheet said that Robin was a B Com graduate from Kolkata and was looking after his father’s rice mill while preparing for chartered accountant exams. He then started a bitcoin trading service called Robin Online Services and contacted investors through various portals.
Robin first came in touch with Sriki virtually in 2017, when the hacker introduced himself under a pseudonym ‘Dariel Herman’.
Sriki offered to sell 900 bitcoins available with him, when the value of each coin ranged from Rs 1.3 lakh to 4 lakh. Robin had sold the coins in phases and transferred the amount to accounts specified by Sriki.
In 2018, the two met for the first time in Bengaluru when Sriki introduced himself as an international hacker. Transactions between the two increased since then.
Sriki and Robin used only encrypted chatting platforms such as Wickr to communicate with each other, according to the charge sheet.
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