BHUBANESWAR : Cyber frauds have hit a new peak across the country during the Covid crisis and in one such case, Bhubaneswar-based employee of a private gold loan finance firm duped his own company to the tune of Rs 30 lakh by availing a fake loan.
But that’s just not all. Sitting in Bhubaneswar, he conned two of his fellow employees in Hyderabad to make away with the loan, only to land in police net. Prime accused Aditya Narayan Mohapatra of Ghatikia, employee of Manappuram’s Bhubaneswar branch contacted two staff of Himayatnagar branch in Hyderabad claiming to be an official of the company's head office.
e asked the two to share their user IDs and passwords on the plea that the head office wanted to check some account details of their branch. After getting the details of the employees, he passed two loans of Rs 30 lakh against the fake deposit of 1.21 kg gold, Hyderabad Police said.
However, Manappuram officials of the Himayatnagar branch later found out that no gold was deposited but loans were sanctioned. When the two employees of the branch denied any knowledge about the fraud, a complaint was lodged with the Cyber Crime police station in Hyderabad.
Investigation found that to process the loan application via Manappuram online application, a customer has to provide his/her registered mobile phone number, address and share the one time password with the company's officials. In this case, the loan was fraudulently sanctioned under the company's 'Doorstep Gold Loan Scheme' under which, the company officials visit the house of the loanee. Mohapatra provided two addresses of Himayatnagar which were later found to be fake by the police. The Cyber Crime officers then traced the mobile number used for availing the loans fraudulently to Mohapatra and arrested him.
"Mohapatra used fake customer names and managed to avail the loans without depositing any gold. He transferred the entire amount to two bank accounts," Hyderabad Cyber Crime police station's ACP, KVM Prasad, told The New Indian Express. A case was registered in this connection under Sections 66C, 66D of Information Technology Act and Sections 419 and 420 of IPC.
Mohapatra had help from Laxmidhar Murmu (21) and Pramod Nayak (23) of Baramunda, Soumya Ranjan Patnaik (21) and Debasish Ojha (20) of Ghatikia. While Nayak works with a private firm in Bhubaneswar, Murmu, Patnaik and Ojha are students. The four had acquaintances with Mohapatra and helped him in handling the user IDs of the two employees and processing the loans. "The accused persons confessed to the crime and were produced before a court in Bhubaneswar and brought to Hyderabad on transit remand for further questioning," said ACP Prasad.