Indian Court Clears CoinDCX Founders in Impersonation Scam

• A magistrate court in Thane, India, has ruled that no prima facie case exists against CoinDCX co-founders Sumit Surendra Gupta and Niraj Ashok Khandelwal.
• The legal proceedings involved an alleged 71 lakh Indian rupees ($75,000) fraud conducted through a lookalike website named coindcx.pro.
• The court granted bail to both founders on March 23 after finding that the informant had been misled by a third party who impersonated the exchange.

Judicial Ruling and Bail Conditions

An Indian magistrate court has granted bail to the co-founders of the CoinDCX cryptocurrency exchange, concluding that there was no initial evidence to support charges of cheating against them. The founders, Sumit Surendra Gupta and Niraj Ashok Khandelwal, were taken into custody for questioning and remanded over a weekend following a complaint by an investor. However, on March 23, the court issued a common order stating that the executives were entitled to bail as no case was made out against them even upon a preliminary review of the evidence.

Each founder was ordered to be released upon executing a 50,000 Indian rupee bond (approximately $530). A condition of their release is that they must remain cooperative with the ongoing investigation and the trial process.

Details of the Impersonation Fraud

The investigation centered on a fraudulent platform using the domain coindcx.pro, which was designed to look like the legitimate Indian exchange. The informant in the case admitted in court that the founders were not the individuals he met at a café in Kausa Mumbra where the transaction took place. Instead, the informant filed an affidavit identifying another individual, named Rana, as the person responsible for the deception.

Key facts regarding the settlement include:

• The primary accused, Rana, has already repaid the 71 lakh INR to the victim.
• The matter has been categorized as "amicably settled" between the victim and the main perpetrator.
• The court noted that the investigation officer had no objection to the release of the CoinDCX founders.

Corporate Response and Market Context

Following the court's decision, CoinDCX issued a statement on March 24 clarifying that the incident was a clear case of third-party impersonation. The company emphasized that the website coindcx.pro has no connection to their official operations. The exchange framed this episode as part of a broader trend of sophisticated phishing and impersonation scams targeting prominent brands within India’s financial and cryptocurrency sectors. The company has urged its users to verify all domains and interact only through official, verified social media profiles and platforms to avoid falling victim to similar fraudulent schemes.