Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Economic Offence Wing (EOW) on Tuesday arrested one more accused in the STA crypto-ponzi scam from Bhubaneswar.
The arrested accused Ratnakar Palai was produced before the OPID Court, Cuttack, on Wednesday.
Ratnakar Palai was arrested in connection with case No.22/2023 and is an important and up-line member of STA having a huge number of members under him (known as down-line members in the MLM/Pyramid-based schemes/scams).
The accused is very close to Gurtej Singh and Nirod Das. An MTech in IT from Karnataka University, Ratnakar claims to be an international speaker, entrepreneur, and investment guru. He is also the propaganda head/ social media influencer of STA in Odisha. He used to run a YouTube channel for wider publicity of this scheme.
The accused is a member of some other such dubious scams which are under scrutiny. He also runs an institute namely ‘Learn to Earn”. However, after the arrest of Gurtej and Nirod, he either deleted or deactivated his social media accounts.
According to the EOW, he had visited Goa along with Nirod to participate in an STA programme.
It is worth mentioning here that the EOW arrested the India head of “STA Crypto token” namely Gurtej Sigh Sidhu, 40, from Sri-Ganganagar, Rajasthan early this month. He is a native of Faridkot in Punjab.
