Odisha EOW cracks down QR code manipulation scam of Rs 14 cr; 1 held

In one of the rarest and newest type of cyber fraud, the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Police detected a case of huge cyber financial fraud in which more than Rs 14 crore has been siphoned off by manipulating QR codes of a Fintech company, an official said.

In connection with this case, the EOW has arrested the accused Karan Kumar Singh, a resident of Noida's Sector-19, Uttar Pradesh, on July 6 under different sections of the IPC and IT Act.

The accused was produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, on July 7 and was brought to Bhubaneswar on the strength of three days' transit remand for producing him before the designated court at Cuttack, an EOW official said.

The arrest was made against a case registered on the basis of a complaint filed by Sanjib Kumar Parida, Chief Technology Officer of ‘IServeU Technology Pvt. Ltd., a Bhubaneswar-based Fintech company.

Parida alleged that their company had entered into technology integration agreements with the directors of Noida-based company, Payone Digital Services Pvt. Ltd. during April-May-2023 for providing digital payment services for facilitation of the finotech service, and accordingly IServeU had extended its UPI API to the company for the commercial utilisation.

On June 19, 2023, the complainant’s company came to know on reconciliation that there is a significant difference in the cash balance in their nodal bank account maintained with the FINO Bank.

On verification of the UPI logs, it came to light that Karan Singh and Lallu Singh, both directors of Payone Digital, have manipulated the QR codes generated by IServeU and embezzled the extra credit of Rs14.33 crore of the complainant’s company

The accused have also fraudulently diverted the extra amount to more than 125 different bank accounts from the payout wallet of which, the User ID and password were shared to Payone Digital by the complainant company IServeU, the official added.

The EOW also suspected that many more people are also involved in this complex and highly technical fraud case.

As no such type of cases has been noticed before, EOW would be taking the help of experts in this case to thoroughly investigate the matter and also come up with advisory so that people can be alerted, he said.