'First' case of ransom in bitcoin: How did the accused receive ransom in cryptocurrency from foreigners?

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At about 9:30 pm on February 10, a car leaves a well-known hotel in Lahore with a Swiss and a German man named Magron Maria Spari and Stephen in it.

Rana Irfan Mehmood, the local host of the foreigners, was also in the car, taking his two foreign guests out to feed and meet some friends.

The vehicle was rented from the hotel while its drive was also provided by the same hotel.

The two foreign guests arrived in Pakistan on the same day at the request of their Pakistani host, whom they had known for the past year and a half.

Fake police and fake media use it for incidents

After some travel, the hotel car stops at a place where after a while two more cars come and stop. Rana Irfan himself sits in one car while the guests are seated in the other car and these cars start moving again while the hotel car is sent back.

After a journey of about one and a half hours, the car of the foreigners starts moving on a deserted road and after a while another car stops in the middle of the road and signals the car of the foreigners to stop. Unidentified gunmen, some of whom appeared to be police officers (because one was wearing a police T-shirt and a blue light in his car), came to search the two foreigners and their vehicle. Let's start.

The two foreigners look at the car of Rana Irfan, the host behind them, but they do not see the car anywhere. The two foreigners are now terrified of this desolate place and the darkness of the night, what is happening to them and where is their host?

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During the search, as soon as a packet of drugs is 'recovered' from the vehicle of the armed men, they become more upset. At the same time, domestic and foreign currency in their pockets are also seized.

The gunmen now blindfold the two foreigners and take them to an unknown location, handcuffing them and tying them to ropes, and both are beaten.

When the two foreigners are forcibly tied up, drugs are pasted on the clothes of one of them and a man wearing a press shirt makes a video of them.

In the ransom bitcoin!

The gunmen now tell the two foreigners that since drugs have been recovered from their possession, which carries the death penalty in Pakistan, they will release the video on local media if no more money is arranged for them. That these two foreigners are involved in the illicit drug trade in Pakistan.

A senior police officer told the BBC that Stephen was forced to extort money from his family after constant threats and intimidation by gunmen. Stephen calls his son in Germany and asks for money, after which he transfers the 1.8 bit coin, valued at about 14 million rupees in Pakistani rupees, to the account mentioned from his laptop while sitting there. Does

After convincing the money transfer, the gunmen put the two back in a car and drop them off at Race Course Park, where they are taken by taxi to the PC Hotel, where they are warned that If they tell anyone, their video will be released to the media.

Police investigation

Anxious, the two foreigners arrive at the hotel in a state of grief and shock and do not leave the hotel for the next day. But then when they get in touch with their embassies, a man from a company called UGS from Islamabad, Ata Noor Saqib, arrives in Lahore and meets with the two foreigners, after which he takes the matter to the police. The decision to go is made.

On February 12, at around one o'clock in the afternoon, the two foreigners and their translator, Ata-ul-Noor Saqib, accompanied by a DIG, reached the Race Course Police Station, where the accused Rana Irfan and others were charged under Section 395 of the Pakistan Penal Code. An FIR has been registered under which life imprisonment or 10 years hard labor is punishable.

According to the senior police officer, looking at the aspects that have come to light in the investigation so far, it can be said that the accused Rana Irfan had very cleverly planned the whole incident for which he not only arranged the vehicles. He had also kept drugs in them so that later his foreign guests could be intimidated, threatened and ransomed.

According to the police officer, apparently fake police and fake media have also been involved in this whole incident so that not only foreigners can be intimidated but also the investigation can be misled.

Ata Al Noor Saqib, the plaintiff in the case and an employee of the GS company, told the BBC that he had received a call from a friend in Switzerland asking him to help him if such an unfortunate incident had taken place. He said that when he contacted Stephen and Magron Mariaspari, they were both very upset because of the accident that happened to them.

He said that after contacting him, he immediately came to Lahore from Islamabad and met the two foreigners and after that he went to the police as a translator for the two foreigners and registered a case.

Rana Irfan and these two foreigners have been in touch for almost the last one and a half years and theyI met him in Germany. He said he did not know whether the two foreigners had any business dealings with Rana Irfan or any other reason.

According to Ata-ul-Noor Saqib, the accused transferred lakhs of rupees in cash from both the foreigners as well as bitcoins worth crores of rupees through a laptop to an account. He further said that at the request of accused Rana Irfan, Stephen had taken his laptop with him to give a presentation to some important officials at the place where he was going for the meeting.

He claimed that accused Rana Irfan knew that he had bitcoin currency.

In response to a question, Ata-ul-Noor Saqib said that the two foreigners were planning to invest  2 billion in Pakistan as they were leading representatives of a large foreign company but could not say more. In which sector was the investment to be made or what is the name of this company?

According to Ata-ul-Noor, other important Pakistani agencies, including the police, are also looking into the case. He added that the German and Swiss embassies were also monitoring the case and were in constant touch with the concerned Pakistani authorities.

SHAHID ASLAM

Abdul Ghaffar Qaisarani: Apparently this is a case of robbery in which the accused lured the two foreigners into his trap and called them to Pakistan and later with the help of other accused robbed them at gunpoint.

SSP Investigation Lahore Abdul Ghaffar Qaisarani told the BBC that the police have not yet been able to trace the main accused Rana Irfan but their teams are working on the case and the accused Rana Irfan will be arrested soon.

He said that this was a case of outright robbery in which the accused lured the two foreigners into his trap and called them to Pakistan and later with the help of other accused robbed them at gunpoint.

"We have complete data of accused Rana Irfan and he is currently using WhatsApp instead of a local number but he will be in our custody soon," he said.

According to SSP Investigation Lahore, investigators are also investigating whether any current police service or any former officer was involved in the incident.

On the other hand, DIG Operations Lahore, Sajid Kayani, told the that this was probably the first case of its kind in Pakistan in which a ransom in bitcoin currency had been taken from an affected person. "I can't say anything about Karachi, but I've never heard of a case in which bitcoin has been snatched from someone."

According to Sajid Kayani, he was told about the incident by a DIG who immediately asked him to take action. He said that the police did not believe that the incident took place in Lahore but despite this we immediately registered an FIR and started searching for the accused.

Sajid Kayani further said that the investigation of bitcoin is very complicated and requires a lot of expertise but in this case they will not have much problem as not only the address of the accused but also the account to which the bitcoins have been transferred. Will also be easily traced which will make recovery possible.

But is that possible?

"Bitcoin accounts are commonly referred to as bitcoin vaults," says Zaheer Rasool, an IT expert and expert on crypto currencies. And bitcoin currency operates on a distributed ledger system, meaning it contains information about how much money is in which vault. But no one knows which wallet belongs to whom. Therefore, the victims may give you the information to which the accused have transferred the bitcoin. But it is difficult to know who owns this account.

"Anyone who has a bitcoin can transfer the money to another cryptocurrency if they want, and if it is transferred to a currency that is a privacy coin, then where is the money?" It is impossible to trace where it goes from here.

"There are many companies in the world that offer this service that if you take a bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency to them, they will give you a new cryptocurrency or a traditional currency like dollar or rupee. So it would be fair to say that the authorities will need blockchain forensic experts to get to the bottom of this matter and it is not an easy task.