Odisha EOW Arrests Six Persons For Rs 16.71 Crore SBI Loan Fraud

Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Odisha, has arrested six persons in connection with an alleged loan fraud amounting to Rs 16.71 crore.

Anirban Patnaik and Anupama Dash were nabbed from Bhubaneswar, Tophan Rout and Satyaban Rout from Khandapada, Tukuna Mallick from Badamba and Feroz Khan from Kakatpur on September 4, an EOW release said on Thursday.

They were arrested on the basis of a complaint lodged Regional Manager, State Bank of India, RBO, Bhubaneswar, Shiba Sundara Sahoo, alleging that the accused availed 161 Xpress Credit Loans amounting to Rs 16.71 crore from Jaydev Vihar (139), Patia (5), Raghunathpur (11) and Jharpada (6) branches of the bank from November 2022 to October 2023 as employees of Phonepe by fabricating employment records.

Investigation revealed that Anirbana Patnaik had taken a building on rent at DLF, Patia, Bhubaneswar, to run the office of his company ‘Purvi Venture Pvt Ltd. However, he along with other accused projected it as the regional office of PhonePe in Bhubaneswar by putting up signboards and stickers of the digital payments and financial services company. They also created a fake e-mail of PhonePe. “The accused then approached different branches of SBI in Bhubaneswar for Xpress Credit Loan (Personal Loan) by filing inflated salary slip and forged employment certificate of Phonepe. During pre-sanction visit, the building hired at Patia was fraudulently shown as the regional office of PhonePe and the fake e-mail was later used to give clearance, identifying the loan applicants are the employees of the company.”

The accused persons managed to get 161 such loans meant for the corporate sector. “Investigation revealed that the accused received 35% of the loan amount from the loanees to get it sanctioned in their favour. The loanees were asked to submit their personal IDs like Aadhaar and PAN, and the other documents were arranged/managed by the accused brokers. The fake e-mail was being used to give the false information that the accused were the employees of Phonepe. Money was sent in advance for 3-4 consecutive months to the accounts of the loanees on a particular date of a month to give the impression that regular salaries were being credited to these every month. “This came to the fore during an internal investigation following non-repayment of the loan amount,” the agency said.

It further said that Tophan Rout, Feroz Khan and Anupama Dash had taken loans by producing fake documents with the help of the other accused persons. “Many incriminating materials like mobile phones containing the incriminating messages pertaining to the fraud have been recovered and seized from those arrested,” it added.

PhonePe, in a statement, said that the arrested persons are in no way associated with it or are its employees at any point of time. “Such persons have never been employed by the company and that any documents in relation to PhonePe used by such persons are forged documents. PhonePe is a law-abiding organization and has been cooperating and working closely with the Economic Offenses Wing of the Odisha Police and State Bank of India to aid their investigation,” it added.