CUTTACK: In a high-value financial scam case, the Orissa High Court has granted regular bail to 23 persons accused of being involved in laundering defrauded funds through their bank accounts.
The scam surfaced with a retired person lodging a complaint that he was duped of Rs 6.28 crore after being added to a WhatsApp group named as an Investment Club, administered by a person using a US number. Posing as investment advisors, the group lured him with daily stock discussions and fake IPO deals.
Falling for the fictitious profits, he invested his retirement corpus into shares of a fake company and was shown massive gains. However, repeated demands for hefty service charges and withdrawal fees led to further losses. Finally, he was removed from the group, the app was deactivated, and no funds were returned.
Acting on the complaint, the state CID-Crime Branch’s cyber police station in Cuttack registered an FIR on August 24, 2024, and arrested 23 persons in connection with the fraud. The vacation court took up the bail petitions of the 23 accused on Monday following the Supreme Court’s direction on May 30 to the high court to consider them on June 9 and decide them expeditiously. One of the accused had sought the SC’s intervention against the delay in adjudication on the bail pleas f i led in December and thereafter.
The bench of Justice AK Mohapara observed, “It prima facie appears that the present petitioners were used to loot the defrauded amount by alluring them a small portion of the money transferred to their account as commission. Thus, it appears that the bank accounts belonging to the petitioners have been used as mule accounts to syphon of the money belonging to the informant.”
“In the case of all petitioners, the money which was initially transferred to their accounts have been subsequently retransferred to the accounts of other persons. The bank statement of the accounts belonging to the petitioners reveals that except the present transaction there are no other high value transactions,” Justice Mohapatra further observed.
The judge opined that there was no need for them to continue in judicial custody and granted bail to all 23 accused persons in a single order with varying conditions.