Indian Court Orders Scam Websites Using Crypto Exchange Mudrex’s Name to Be Taken Down

• An Indian court has ordered the takedown of websites using Mudrex’s brand to scam people.

• The Ministry of Communications was given a week to comply with the order.

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.”