3 BSNL staff held for online fraud, main accused at large 

Rs.11.69 lakh was fraudulently drawn from a firm’s account through 11 transactions. 

ROURKELA: Cyber frauds involving net banking and digital transactions are on the rise in Sundargarh district.  Uditnagar police of Rourkela have arrested three Balasore-based employees of BSNL for their alleged involvement in online theft of  Rs11.69 lakh from the cash credit (CC) account of a business firm. In another development, a net banking theft of `44,000 was reported on Saturday.

Uditnagar police station IIC PK Das informed that BSNL’s Sub-Divisional Engineer (SDE) Sashidhar Barik and two data entry operators of Balasore district were forwarded to court on Saturday in connection with the online theft. Investigation revealed that a fraudster had visited Balasore office of BSNL and cooked up a story that his mobile phone was lost. He falsely claimed that the mobile number of the victim businessman, Sumit Chanduka, belonged to him and without verifying his identity, the BSNL trio issued him a new SIM of Chanduka’s phone number.

With Chanduka’s phone number, the fraudster got the CC account, current account and savings account details with One Time Password (OTP) of Chanduka’s proprietorship firm Hindustan Trade Syndicate to steal `11.69 lakh. While police are not revealing the identity of the fraudster as the case is under investigation, they said he would be arrested soon.

Chanduka said his firm’s bank accounts are at Kachery Road branch of Indian Bank in Rourkela. He said between 5.30 pm on July 11 and 12.30 pm on July 12, his mobile phone network remained disrupted. During this period, online theft of `11.69 lakh was committed from the CC account through 11 transactions. Due to a technical error, another `3.5 lakh could not be transferred from the current account, Chanduka added.

Meanwhile, a resident of nearby Nuagaon block in Sundargarh district, Pradeep Tripathy, on Saturday lodged a complaint at Bisra police station alleging that `44,000 was stolen from his savings account.
 Tripathy said he has the account at Sorda branch of SBI and between June 18 and July 1, the amount was stolen from his account through six transactions and he did not receive any transaction details on his registered mobile phone number.

On Friday, he received an SMS on his mobile about total balance of `11,000 and after visiting the bank, he learnt about the fraudulent transactions. He said he has never used net banking facility in his account and the bank authorities are indifferent to his complaint.

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