CoinDCX plans anti-fraud push after founders cleared in impersonation case

CoinDCX has announced a 100 crore Indian rupees (around $11 million) Digital Suraksha Network as a response to brand impersonation and cyber fraud, days after a court said there was “no prima facie” case against its founders.

The initiative, outlined by co-founder and CEO Sumit Gupta in a March 30 post on X, comes after he and fellow co-founder Neeraj Khandelwal were taken into police custody earlier in March over a complaint tied to a fake “CoinDCX Pro” website that cheated an investor out of around $75,000.

Thane police detained the founders on March 21 in connection with the fraud case, and the magistrate court later granted them bail, finding no case against them, and that the complainant had never met the real founders. The fraud was carried out by third parties posing as the founders via a spoofed trading site, a version of events CoinDCX had maintained from the outset.

In an earlier communication on X, the exchange said it had already identified more than 1,200 websites impersonating its brand, highlighting a broader phishing and impersonation problem around Indian crypto platforms. Gupta’s new announcement packages CoinDCX’s response as a sector‑wide cyber safety push rather than a company-specific issue.

CoinDCX says fraud impersonation sector-wide problem

“This is not a crypto problem,” Gupta wrote, arguing that any business with a digital footprint could see its brand copied and weaponized against consumers. 

The Digital Suraksha Network pledge includes a proposed 24/7 WhatsApp helpline for anyone to verify links and platforms before sending funds, an open fraud intelligence application programming interface (API) fed by CoinDCX’s database of fake sites, training support for state cybercrime cells on blockchain forensics and asset tracing, and a “Caution Before Transaction” campaign aimed at ordinary digital finance users. 

Related: Hong Kong retiree loses $840K in triple ‘crypto expert’ scam

Gupta did not provide a detailed rollout timeline for the network, nor did he specify how much of the $11 million commitment has been budgeted or deployed at this stage.

CoinDCX, which counts Coinbase among its investors, was valued at $2.45 billion post-money in October 2025 after Coinbase increased its investment in the exchange.

Cointelegraph reached out to Gupta and CoinDCX but had not received a response by publication.

Magazine: Meet the onchain crypto detectives fighting crime better than the cops