The accused, identified as Sreedhar Moharana (26), was arrested following investigation into his alleged involvement in a series of cybercrimes and financial scams.

Police said the accused had created a fake Facebook profile and had been luring unsuspecting victims with a profile picture of an attractive young woman. He had also fabricated a false story, claiming to be an MBBS student at a prominent medical college in Odisha.

The accused would establish contact with individuals and initiate conversations through messenger apps. He gained the trust of his victims and then proceeded to exchange contact information, including phone numbers.

Moharana managed to gain the trust of the victim, Ankit Kumar Gupta, and later took Rs 34.37 lakh in last one year on the pretext of treatment of his ailing father and medical course.

Police has also seized mobile phones, laptop, debit cards of different banks and one ID card from the accused. Police said that they are further verifying the antecedents of the accused. Further investigation is in progress.

“It is the latest form of cyber financial fraud. EOW has for the first time unearthed such a cybercrime by arresting the fraudster Karan Kumar Singh, a resident of Sec-19, Noida, Uttar Pradesh. We have found prima facie evidence of Rs 14 crore embezzlement by manipulation of QR codes of a Fintech company”, said Deputy Inspector General of Police, EOW, Jay Narayan Pankaj.

The accused was produced before the CJM, Goutam Budha Nagar, UP on yesterday and was brought to Bhubaneswar on the strength of 3 days transit remand for his production before the Designated Court at Cuttack, EOW said in a statement.

This case was registered on the report of Sanjib Kumar Parida, chief technology officer of ‘IServeU Technology Pvt Ltd.’, a Bhubaneswar-based Fintech company with the allegation that during April-May-2023, they had entered into Technology integration agreements with the Directors of Noida based Company M/s Payone Digital Services Pvt. Ltd., providing Digital Payment Services, for facilitation of the Finotech Service.

Accordingly, IServeU had extended its UPI API to the company for commercial utilization. Karan Kumar Singh and his brother Lallu Singh are the Directors of M/s Payone Digital Services Pvt. Ltd. On 19 June 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, the EOW statement said.

On verification of the UPI logs, it came to light that Karan Singh and Lallu Singh both Directors Payone Digital Services by manipulating the QR Codes generated by the complainant company have embezzled the extra credit of around Rs.14.33 crore of the complainant’s company and fraudulently diverted the amount to more than 125 different Bank Accounts from the Payout wallet of which, the User ID and Password were shared to Payone Digital Services Pvt. Ltd by the Complainant company IServeU.

It is being suspected that many other fraudsters are also involved in this complex and highly technical case. As no such type of cases has been detected before, EOW would be taking the help of experts to thoroughly investigate the matter and also come up with an advisory so that people can be alerted, EOW added.