Lucknow: The economic offences wing (EOW) of Odisha on Saturday arrested a fraudster from UP for allegedly manipulating a QR code and siphoning off Rs 14 crore from a company based in the city. The accused was identified as Karan Kumar Singh of Noida.
EOW sleuths said the accused hacked the payment gateway of the affected Bhubaneswar-based fintech company. “During interrogation, we found that Karan was not the only one behind the QR code manipulation and that he had Chinese assistance. We found the Chinese connection from chats on Karan’s mobile phone,” said EOW officials.
“We can confirm that the fraud amounting to Rs 14 crore has been committed with QR code. But how the QR code was manipulated, how the transaction was carried out and the Chinese link are under investigation. This is for the first time, EOW has come across a case of QR code manipulation. Earlier, we had solved several cases of loan app fraud where the accused had Chinese link, the officers said.
The EOW registered the case based on a complaint of Sanjib Kumar Panda, chief technology officer of the company. Sanjib’s firm had entered into an agreement with a Noida-based company for digital payment services. The Noida firm had shared its unique payment interface (UPI).
The fintech firm learnt during reconciliation that there was a significant difference in the cash balance in their nodal bank account. On the verification of UPI logs, it came to light that Karan and his associate Lallu Singh (both directors in the Noida firm) had manipulated the QR code. They fraudulently diverted Rs 14.33 crore to more than 125 different bank accounts from the payout wallet of which the user ID and password had been shared with the Noida firm as per agreement.
