ED Busts HashPe Crypto Ponzi: ₹113 Crore Fraud Explained

India's Enforcement Directorate has attached assets worth ₹14.16 crore in a crypto investment case built on a promise no genuine investment can keep: 1% returns every single day. The case is HashPe, a platform run through the website hashpe.io and a multi-level marketing network that, according to the ED, collected about ₹112.91 crore from investors by selling them fictitious tokens — coins the promoters created at almost no cost and gave artificial values — while displaying profits on screen that no real trading ever produced. Four promoters are in judicial custody, and the ED has filed a prosecution complaint before the Special PMLA Court in Puducherry. This guide explains what the agency has alleged, how the scheme worked, why the 1% daily promise is mathematically impossible, and the red flags that mark this kind of fraud from the very first pitch.

> Educational content only. This is not financial advice. Crypto markets are volatile — never invest money you can't afford to lose. This guide explains a published enforcement case; it does not recommend buying, selling or holding any asset, and it does not predict where prices will go.

What Happened: ED's HashPe Case in Numbers

The facts, as reported on 9–11 November 2026 by ANI, NDTV Profit, Inc42 and the Ministry of Cyber Affairs, are:

• The platform was operated by M/s Pan India Crypto Currency under the name HashPe, through the website hashpe.io and a multi-level marketing (MLM) network.
• It promised investors 1% daily returns, up to three times their investment, referral commissions, and rewards such as luxury cars and foreign trips.
• According to the ED, the platform's tokens — TCX and HashPe — were fictitious. The promoters allegedly created them at almost zero acquisition cost and assigned them artificial values, then displayed profits on the platform without any actual trading activity to support them.
• About ₹112.91 crore was collected through the scheme, via cash payments, bank transfers and crypto assets, including USDT (Tether) and Bitcoin. A portion of that money was returned to investors — the early payouts that keep a Ponzi scheme looking alive.
• The ED has identified about ₹49.54 crore as proceeds of crime.
• On 30 October 2026, the ED's Chennai Zonal Office-II provisionally attached assets worth ₹14.16 crore under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 — properties in Tamil Nadu, Haryana and New Delhi, a BMW car, and bank balances.
• The agency has filed a prosecution complaint — the equivalent of a charge sheet — before the Special Court (PMLA) in Puducherry.
• The investigation began with an FIR registered by the Puducherry Cyber Crime Police Station under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, and the Information Technology Act, 2000.
• On 1 September 2026, the ED searched premises linked to HashPe, its promoters and associates. Four men — Imran Basha, Hitesh Kumar, Syed Usman alias Babu, and Dhamodharan — were arrested under Section 19 of the PMLA and are in judicial custody.

The numbers tell the shape of the case at a glance:

Figure	What it means
₹112.91 crore	Total the ED says was collected from investors
₹49.54 crore	Proceeds of crime the ED says it has identified so far
₹14.16 crore	Assets provisionally attached on 30 October 2026
4	Promoters arrested and in judicial custody
1% per day	The daily return the scheme promised
3x	The maximum return promised on any investment

One important caveat runs through all of it: these are allegations under investigation, not court findings. A prosecution complaint has been filed, which means the case will now be tested in court. The promoters have not been convicted, and the figures above are the ED's claims, reported by the press. That distinction matters — but it does not change the lesson. Whether or not every allegation is ultimately proved, the pitch at the centre of this case — guaranteed daily returns from a new token — is a pattern beginners should learn to recognise on sight.

How the Scheme Worked: Fake Tokens, Real Money

The HashPe model, as the ED describes it, followed a familiar Ponzi pattern with a crypto wrapper. Understanding each step is useful, because the same steps appear — with different names and different tokens — in case after case.

Step one: create a token out of nothing. Anyone can create a crypto token for almost no cost. That is not a flaw in crypto; it is a feature of open blockchains. But it means a token's existence proves nothing about its value. According to the ED, the HashPe promoters created TCX and HashPe tokens at virtually no acquisition cost and then assigned them artificial values. A token with no real market, no real use and no real buyers can be "worth" whatever its creators say it is worth — on their own website, in their own app, on their own terms.

Step two: promise returns that sound small enough to believe. One per cent a day sounds modest. It does not sound like the wild "100x" promises that most people have learned to distrust. That is precisely why it works. A beginner hears "just 1% a day" and thinks it sounds reasonable, even conservative. The maths says otherwise, as the next section shows — but the pitch is designed to slip past the scepticism that a bigger number would trigger.

Step three: show profits that never happened. The platform displayed profits to investors, according to the ED, despite the absence of any genuine trading activity to support them. This is the easiest part of the fraud to build and the hardest part for a victim to detect. A dashboard can show any number the operator types in. If your "balance" grows by 1% a day on screen, it feels like the investment is working — even if nothing behind the screen is earning anything at all.

Step four: pay early investors with new investors' money. A portion of the ₹112.91 crore collected was returned to investors, the ED says. Those early payouts are not generosity; they are the engine of the scheme. An early investor who actually receives money becomes the scheme's best salesperson, telling friends and family that it works. The referral commissions and luxury-car rewards accelerate this: every new recruit is both a fresh deposit and a fresh promoter. The scheme survives only while new money keeps arriving faster than old investors withdraw.

Step five: block withdrawals and disappear. The scheme, according to the ED's account carried by ANI, eventually ran into trouble when withdrawals were blocked and the platform was disabled. This is the moment every Ponzi scheme reaches: the inflow of new money slows, the promised payouts exceed what is coming in, and the operator stops letting people take their money out. Investors are left holding tokens that no exchange will buy, in a platform that no longer answers.

Notice what is absent from this story. There is no hacked exchange, no stolen private key, no smart-contract bug. Nobody's wallet was drained by malware. The money was handed over willingly, by people who believed a promise. That is what makes investment fraud different from the hacks this site usually covers — and what makes it more dangerous for beginners, because no security checklist about seed phrases or approvals can protect someone who voluntarily sends money to a scheme.

Why 1% a Day Is Mathematically Impossible

The single most useful piece of arithmetic in this whole case is the compound-interest calculation on a 1% daily return. It takes ten seconds, and it destroys the pitch completely.

One per cent a day, compounded, means your money multiplies by 1.01 every day. Over a year, that is 1.01 raised to the power of 365 — roughly 37.8 times your starting amount. Put ₹1 lakh in, and after a year of genuine 1% daily returns you would have about ₹37.8 lakh. After two years, about ₹1.4 crore. After three years, more than ₹5 crore — from a single ₹1 lakh deposit, with no additional investment.

No real business earns that. The world's best investors average far less than 1% a day over any sustained period, and they do it with enormous risk, enormous expertise, and years when they lose money. A platform offering 1% a day, every day, with no down days and no explanation of where the returns come from, is not describing an investment. It is describing a magic trick — and the trick is that the "returns" are simply other people's deposits, relabelled.

The 3x cap in the HashPe pitch deserves a second look, too. The scheme promised returns "up to three times" the investment. That cap is not a limit on generosity; it is a limit on the scheme's own liability. A Ponzi operator who promised unlimited compounding would owe every investor 37x in a year and collapse within weeks. Capping payouts at 3x stretches the scheme's life, keeps the books manageable, and — conveniently — gives the pitch a ceiling that sounds disciplined and businesslike. It is a design choice for the fraud, not a protection for the investor.

The lesson generalises. Any promise of a fixed daily or weekly return — 1% a day, 5% a week, 10% a month, guaranteed — fails the same test. Real investments fluctuate. They have losing days. They cannot promise a fixed rate, because nobody controls what markets do tomorrow. A fixed, guaranteed return is not a feature of a good investment; it is the signature of a scheme that is paying you with someone else's money.

The Red Flags Beginners Can Spot

HashPe is not the first case of this kind in India, and it will not be the last. This site has already covered the alleged ₹500 crore Korvio Coin case, in which the ED says more than 2.48 lakh users were affected by a similar MLM-plus-guaranteed-returns model, and the AP CID's ₹15 crore Tenali fraud case. The names change; the red flags do not. Here are the ones that would have marked HashPe from the start:

1. Guaranteed daily returns. The single strongest warning sign. No genuine investment can promise a fixed return every day. If the pitch includes a daily, weekly or monthly percentage that never varies, walk away.
2. A token you cannot sell anywhere else. TCX and HashPe existed on the platform's own terms. A genuine token trades on real exchanges, has a real market price set by real buyers and sellers, and can be sold without the promoter's permission. If the only place to buy or sell a token is the platform selling it to you, its price is whatever the platform says it is — which is to say, meaningless.
3. Profits shown on a screen, with no verifiable trading behind them. A dashboard balance is not evidence of earnings. Real returns come from real activity — trading, lending, staking, or a business that earns revenue — and a legitimate platform can explain, in plain language, where the money comes from. "Our trading bot does it" or "our AI generates profits" is not an explanation.
4. Referral commissions and recruitment rewards. When a platform pays you more for bringing in new members than for any actual product or service, its real product is new members. MLM structures are not automatically illegal, but when recruitment income dominates and the underlying "investment" has no verifiable earnings, the structure is a Ponzi scheme wearing an MLM costume. Luxury cars and foreign trips as rewards are designed to make the scheme look successful and aspirational — and to keep promoters recruiting.
5. Cash payments and money routed through team leaders. The ED says HashPe collected money through cash, bank transfers and crypto wallets. Cash payments and person-to-person collection make the money trail harder to follow and harder to recover. A legitimate investment platform takes payment through traceable, regulated channels in its own name.
6. Pressure to act now, and social proof instead of documents. Ponzi schemes run on urgency and testimonials — "join before the price rises", "everyone in my village is earning". A genuine investment gives you time, documents and verifiable information. If the pitch leans on other people's supposed earnings instead of audited financials, that is the answer.
7. No regulator, no registration, no accountability. In India, no regulator licenses a platform to guarantee 1% daily crypto returns, because no such product exists. FIU-IND registration, where it applies, covers anti-money-laundering compliance for crypto businesses — it is not an endorsement of an investment scheme, and it does not make guaranteed returns legitimate.

Any one of these flags is a reason to pause. Two or more together is a reason to walk away entirely — and to warn anyone you know who is considering joining.

What This Means for Indian Crypto Users

The HashPe case lands in the middle of a wider enforcement pattern that Indian crypto users should understand. In the past two weeks alone, the ED has searched CoinDCX and Delta Exchange over alleged FEMA violations, arrested people in a ₹400 crore Chennai cyber-fraud case, and now attached assets in the HashPe case. The message from enforcement agencies is consistent: crypto is not outside the law in India, and schemes that use crypto as a wrapper for old frauds are being pursued under the same laws — PMLA, BNS, the IT Act and FEMA — that apply to any other financial crime.

For ordinary users, three practical points follow.

First, the tax rules do not care whether the scheme was genuine. In India, selling crypto is a taxable transfer: gains are taxed at a flat 30% plus a 4% cess (31.2% in total), with no set-off of losses against other income, and sales attract 1% TDS on the sale value. Tax note: crypto tax rules can change — the 30% rate and 1% TDS described here were current as of September 2026. Verify the latest rules before filing. Victims of a fraud who managed to withdraw funds before the collapse may still face tax questions on those withdrawals, and the losses from a collapsed scheme cannot simply be set off against other income. Keep every transaction record — it matters for both the investigation and your tax filing.

Second, recovery is slow and partial. The ED attached ₹14.16 crore against ₹112.91 crore collected and ₹49.54 crore identified as proceeds of crime. Even if the attached assets are eventually distributed to victims — a process that runs through the courts and takes time — it will cover only a fraction of what was lost. That is the normal shape of Ponzi recoveries: most of the money is gone, spent or moved, long before the authorities arrive. The best protection is never sending the money in the first place.

Third, the "fake token" trick is now a standard fraud tool. Creating a token costs almost nothing, and the token's name and branding can be made to look as professional as any legitimate project. Beginners should treat any new token the way they would treat a stranger offering an investment on the street: with scepticism, and with a demand for independent evidence. A real project has a public team, a public codebase, trading on established exchanges, and a product that exists outside its own marketing. A token that exists only on one platform's website has none of those things.

A Safety Checklist If You Encounter a Scheme Like This

Whether or not you have come across HashPe specifically, these steps apply to any platform promising guaranteed crypto returns:

1. Do not send money, and do not recruit others. The moment a platform promises fixed daily returns, stop. Recruiting friends or family into a scheme can create legal and personal consequences for you as well as losses for them.
2. Do not share your seed phrase or private keys with any platform. No legitimate investment needs them. Anyone asking for them is trying to steal your wallet, whatever else they promise.
3. If you have already paid, preserve everything. Save receipts, bank and wallet transaction records, chat messages, screenshots of the platform and its promises, and the names and contact details of whoever introduced you. Do not delete anything — investigators need the trail.
4. Report it. In India, crypto fraud can be reported through the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in, or at your local police station and cybercrime cell. The Puducherry FIR is what started the HashPe investigation; reports from victims are how these cases begin.
5. Do not trust "recovery" offers. After every fraud, a second wave of scammers contacts victims offering to recover their money for a fee. They cannot recover it, and the fee is simply a second theft. Only official channels — the police, the cybercrime portal, the ED — handle recovery.
6. Check before you invest, every time. Before putting money into any crypto platform, ask: who runs it, where is it registered, where does the return come from, can I sell the token on an independent exchange, and does any regulator oversee it? If those questions have no clear answers, the investment has no foundation.
7. Talk about it. Fraud schemes thrive on silence and embarrassment. If someone in your family or friend circle is being pitched a guaranteed-returns scheme, share the red flags with them — and share this guide. The cheapest lesson is the one someone else already paid for.

The Bottom Line

On 30 October 2026, the Enforcement Directorate provisionally attached ₹14.16 crore in assets — properties in three states, a BMW car and bank balances — in the HashPe case, an alleged crypto Ponzi scheme that promised 1% daily returns and up to three times the investment, collected about ₹112.91 crore, and, according to the ED, sold investors fictitious tokens created at almost no cost while displaying profits no real trading ever produced. Four promoters are in judicial custody after searches on 1 September, and a prosecution complaint is now before the Special PMLA Court in Puducherry. The case is still an allegation, not a conviction — but the pitch at its centre is a solved problem for anyone who does the maths. One per cent a day compounds to roughly 37 times your money in a year, and no genuine investment on earth does that. Guaranteed daily returns, a token you can only buy and sell on the promoter's own platform, and rewards for recruiting new members are not the marks of a clever new investment. They are the marks of an old fraud in new clothes — and the cheapest way to survive one is to recognise it before you pay.

Keep Learning

• Korvio Coin ED Raids: Rs 500 Crore Crypto Fraud Explained — the ED's other big MLM Ponzi case: guaranteed returns, 2.48 lakh affected users, and the same red flags in a different scheme.
• How to Spot a Crypto Ponzi Scheme: Red Flags Every Beginner Must Know — the full red-flag checklist: guaranteed returns, recruitment pressure, fake tokens and the questions to ask before investing.
• 7 Common Crypto Scams Targeting Indians — the most common frauds aimed at Indian users, how each one works, and how to avoid them.