BHUBANESWAR : City police on Thursday arrested three cyber fraudsters for allegedly duping a man of Rs 70 lakh by luring him to invest his money in share market on the promise of providing high returns.
The accused - Rakesh Swain (18), Babul Swain (19) and Mithun Biswal (21) - belong to Nayagarh district and worked as masons and labourers.
The victim, Satyaranjan Satapathy, had lodged a complaint in this connection on March 26. Police said Satapathy works as a data entry operator and wanted to make some extra money by doing a part-time job.
In his complaint, Satapathy stated that he had received a link on WhatsApp offering a part-time job. After he clicked the link, he was directed to a Telegram group. Initially, the cyber fraudsters asked him to rate some business establishments on Google to make some easy money.
They then lured him to invest in stock market and cryptocurrencies to get higher returns. Satapathy transferred the amount through unified payments interface on March 20 but later realised that he was scammed.
“The probe revealed that out of the total swindled amount, Rs 50,000 was transferred to the bank account of Rakesh. It was also ascertained that Babul and Mithun were engaged in collecting mule bank accounts for the cyber fraudsters who are mostly active in southern and western states,” said cyber crime and economic offences police station ACP, Akshaya Kumar Nayak. Three mobile phones and one ATM card were seized from them.