Crypto exchange WazirX gets more than 800 queries about suspicious transactions

Homegrown crypto exchange WazirX on Monday said it received 828 queries from law enforcement agencies, including 764 from India, and it complied with 100 per cent of those in the April-September period.

WazirX said that only 0.008 per cent of all transactions on its platform during this period were reported/investigated by the law enforcement agencies.

The requests were received against a total of 10 million transactions during this period.

The most number of requests came in from regulators and law enforcement agencies in Maharashtra.

"We will continue our efforts to educate Indians about Crypto, and comply with regulators to ensure any form of fraud with virtual digital assets is tackled," said Nischal Shetty, CEO, and Founder, WazirX.

The crypto exchange said it also proactively identified accounts with suspicious activities with the help of third-party platforms, and shared the information with the Financial Investigation Unit (FIU-IND).

"We recorded an improvement in average turnaround time at 18 minutes for the first cut of the response to law enforcement agencies, although the recommended duration is 48 to 72 hours, as per IT Act, 2000," said the company.

Illegal fund transfers, Crypto scams, cheating and forgery were the most common types of crimes reported, resembling scams in the traditional financial sector.

It blocked more than 700 accounts during this period. The majority of them were due to requests that came in from users.

In Bandra, Mumbai, the WazirX team helped identify wallets linked to Chinese loan apps which were used to dupe people through fraudulent transactions.

The team worked closely with the law enforcement agency to identify the accused and block their operations using Crypto.

WazirX currently has over 15 million users.

Published on: Monday, November 28, 2022, 03:11 PM IST