Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Bhubaneswar, arrested accused Rajat Kumar of Mohalia, Kharadian in Yamuna Nagar district of Haryana on Sunday from Paonta Sahib in Sirmur district of Himachal Pradesh in connection with a case registered at the EOW police station in the Odisha capital.
The accused was produced before the Court of ACJM, Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh on Monday, and brought to Bhubaneswar on a four-day transit remand. The accused will be produced before the Designated Court under OPID-cum-SPL Court for EOW in Cuttack on Wednesday.
The case was registered based on a report filed by a journalist Ratna Tripathy from the Nayapalli area in Bhubaneswar.
Investigation into the case so far has revealed that on June 19 last year, Tripathy received a phone call (VoIP call) from a person who introduced himself as an employee of FedEx, Hyderabad, and told her that a parcel containing six passports, one laptop, five ATM cards, and 150 gms of narcotics drugs have been sent to her and they have been intercepted by NCB officials in Mumbai.
When she denied sending or ordering any parcel, the caller asked her to come down personally to the Narcotic Bureau Cell in Mumbai and clarify her point. If she cannot attend physically, she can contact Mr Gill of Narcotic Bureau, Mumbai over Skype. If she ignores this she will be prosecuted under various charges including narcotics cases and money laundering etc.
Accordingly, she connected with Gill on Skype, and a person who introduced himself as Gill, the alleged Head of the Narcotic Bureau Cell, Mumbai, told her that a case of money laundering, narcotics smuggling, and violation of crypto norms had been filed against her due to the illegal transactions through her bank accounts. In addition, they told her that she has links with gangster Islam Malik.
Subsequently, she was made to talk to one Dr. Balsing Rajput, IPS, DCP, Cyber Crime, who showed her a document issued by the CBI and a letter with the seal of RBI that mentions her involvement in money laundering. He suggested that if she wants to prove her innocence, she has to send an amount of Rs 1.5 lakh to an account number of the FDRBI of RBI for verification. Further, she was assured that if nothing illegal/suspicious is found with her bank transactions, the amount will be immediately returned to her within 15 minutes.
Panicking over the issue, she sent the amount from her bank accounts through UPI and IMPS. During the conversation for the next 10 to 15 minutes, she was given the clean chit but the caller went offline, and her money was never returned as assured.
During the investigation, it was found that it was a huge scam using the name of courier companies and faking NCB, CBI, ED, police officers, etc. Hundreds of people across the country are being extorted huge amounts of money. As the scammers use the names of real NCB/CBI/ED/IPS officers, people tend to believe them as genuine. However, they don‘t show their face in the video chat. They use fake identity cards/certificates/logos etc which further emboldens the belief that they are genuine.
It was found that the amount deposited by the victim landed in mule accounts of one Jagdamba Enterprises in Punjab. It was also found that scammers, in just 2-3 days, had extorted Rs 5.58 crore (from many victims across the country using this single account). However, this money was further transferred to different mule accounts and ultimately a major chunk of this amount was withdrawn through ATM in Dubai, UAE.
It was found that the money was transferred from three accounts of informant Ratna Tripathy and her son-in-law had landed in the account of Jagadamba Enterprises of which the present arrested accused Rajat Kumar is an authorised signatory.
However, this accused is just a part of a much larger conspiracy/ scam of defrauding the innocent public by blackmailing them in the name of sending/receiving incriminating material/ narcotics drugs, etc. through courier agencies and by impersonating the authorities of Police, Crime Branch, NCB, CBI and RBI, etc.
With this arrest, the EOW has got vital clues about the real masterminds of this scam and the fraudsters sitting in Dubai. Efforts are on to arrest them.
Further, so far 17 incriminating bank accounts have been frozen in this case and an investigation into the case is still underway.
