Over Rs 14 Crore QR Code Manipulation Fraud Detected In Odisha; One Arrested From Noida

Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offence Wing, Bhubaneswar, has detected a huge cyber financial fraud in which more than Rs 14 crore was siphoned off by manipulating QR codes of a Fintech company.

The agency also arrested Karan Kumar Singh, a resident of Cec-19 in Noida on July 6, in connection with the case registered on the complaint of Sanjib Kumar Parida, Chief Technology Officer of ‘IServeU Technology Pvt Ltd.’, a Bhubaneswar-based Fintech company. The accused is being brought to Bhubaneswar on 3-day transit remand, an official release said on Saturday.

According to EOW, the company had entered into technology integration agreements with Noida-based  Payone Digital Services Pvt Ltd, providing digital payment services, for facilitation of Finotech Service, in April-May 2023 and accordingly, IServeU had extended its UPI API to the company for the commercial utilisation. Karan Kumar Singh and his brother Lallu Singh are the directors of the Noida-based company.

On June 19, the complainant’s company came to know about significant difference in the cash balance in their nodal bank account maintained with the FINO Bank. Verification of the UPI logs revealed that Karan Singh and Lallu Singh had embezzled the extra credit of Rs 14.33 crore of the complainant’s company IServeU 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 with Payone Digital Services Pvt Ltd, by manipulating the QR Codes generated by the complainant company.

The EOW suspect involvement of other accused in this “complex and highly technical case”. “As there are no such type of cases has been noticed before, EOW would be taking the help of experts in this case to thoroughly investigate the matter and also come up with advisory so that people can be alerted,” it added.