4 persons arrested for duping man of Rs 14 lakh in cyber fraud in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: Amid rising cases of cyber fraud, police have arrested four persons on the charge of duping a man to the tune of lakhs on the pretext of cryptocurrency trading in Balasore district of Odisha here today.

The accused are Vivekanand Mallick, Sapan Kumar Dalei, Sunil Kumar Das, and Bijan Kumar Panda, all from Balasore district. They were nabbed on the basis of a complaint by one Pramod Sahu of Chintamaniswar in Bhubaneswar who alleged that he was cheated to the tune of Rs 14 lakh in the name of online trading of bitcoin. Police have also  seized Rs 39 lakh from their bank accounts along with 10 ATM cards, 5 passbooks, 7 cheque books, a laptop, four mobile phones and a SIM card from their possession.

According to the victim, the accused reached out to him and lured him to earn easy money upto lakhs by just liking and sharing videos on social media platform Telegram. Convinced, Sahu paid Rs 1,000 and became a member, and started liking and sharing videos. The scamsters then asked him to pay Rs 50,000 and gave Rs 60,000 in return in order to gain his trust. They then convinced him to invest Rs 5 lakh in Bitcoin with the assurance of Rs 7 lakh in return. However, Sahu did not get the amount. When he contacted the accused, they asked him to deposit Rs 14 lakh and cited some procedure for money withdrawal.

Realising that he had been defrauded after he was unable to withdraw the money even after depositing Rs 14 lakh, Sahu approached the cyber police and filed a complaint after which investigation started and the accused nabbed.

Following the arrest, ACP (Zone 5) Sanjiv Satpathy confirmed the fraud and said the victim was manipulated to invest in cryptocurrency with the false assurance of high returns. “Cyber fraudsters have been devising new methods to dupe people of late. In this case, the victim was duped of Rs 14 lakh in the lure of earning quick money through online trading in cryptocurrency. He received a link on Whatsapp which assured high returns. He initially paid Rs 1,000 and became a member, and started liking and sharing videos. The scamsters then asked him to pay Rs 50,000 and gave Rs 60,000 in return in order to gain his trust. They then convinced him to invest Rs 5 lakh in Bitcoin with the assurance of Rs 7 lakh in return by opening an ID for him. However, Sahu did not get the amount. When he contacted the accused, they asked him to deposit Rs 14 lakh and cited some procedure for money withdrawal. When he could not witgdraw even that amount, he realised he had been trapped and reached out to police. Basing on his complaint, we arrested four persons including prime accused Vivekanada Mallick,” he said, adding that it also came to the fore that all the accused were opening fake bank accounts by taking credentials of poor people. While one of the accused Sunil Das was a sales manager in bank, his accomplice Sapan Dalei was helping him create fake bank accounts. Police has stepped up efforts to trace involvement of other people and investigation is underway, he said.