In a relief to Venture Capital (VC) firms Peak XV and Sequoia Capital, the Delhi High Court recently directed instant messaging platforms WhatsApp and Telegram to take down channels and mobile numbers impersonating them.
The above direction was passed in pleas filed by Peak XV and Sequoia Capital, alleging that people were being cheated online using their names in order to dupe the public to the extent of several lakhs and crore. It further alleged that the perpetrators of the scams have impersonated employees of the firm to conduct webinars on stock trading tips with the intent to dupe the public.
It was Sequoia's case that a WhatsApp group named John Analyst Group-303 managed by persons who identified themselves as Sequoia Capital Investors Advisors and Sequoia Capital BTC Trading Team started offering investment and trading advice. According to the VC firm, the investor would then be asked to open a Bitcoin trading account on the website “www.leadlec.com”, using the invitation code ‘pke9’ and also directed him to create Cryptocurrency wallet on a third-party platform, such as Binance or KuCoin, purchase 50 USDT (US Dollar Tether) and transfer the same to his Leadlec account. Thus this amounted to a misuse of their name.
Similarly, Peak XV submitted that it came to know of a website called “https://pakxv.joyppp.com/” , which was impersonating it and offering investment advice. According to Peak XV, the website claimed that a prospective investor would earn an income of Rs 19,900 upon investing of Rs 1,000 with a daily income of Rs 420 for a period of 45 days. The website also claimed that the users can make payments through various modes, including Google Pay and PayTM.
Court's order:
In its order, the court restrained unknown persons who impersonating these VC firms from doing so. Furthermore, the court directed Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co. Ltd and the other sto suspend/ block access to the website “https://pak.xv.ioyppp.com/” , as it is spreading misinformation about these firms. Alibaba has also been asked to file complete details concerning the name, contact details, mode of payment, and IP address used by the registrants of the website, in a sealed cover.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has been asked to issue appropriate notifications/ directions to all telecom and Internet Service Providers, Domain Name Registrars in India to permanently block/ delete/ remove access to all the telephone numbers, websites, domain names, accounts on social media and messaging platforms etc which are impersonating Peak XV and Sequoia.
The court further directed IndusInd Bank to suspend the UPI ids that were being used by those impersonating the VC firms.
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