EOW Unravels Rs 14 Cr QR Code Fraud, Accused Nabbed from Noida

Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Crime Branch unearthed a novel digital fraud in which more than Rs 14 crore was taken away by manipulating quick response (QR) codes of a Fintech company.

The EOW, Bhubaneswar arrested the accused Karan Kumar Singh, from Noida of UP on July 6. After production before the CJM in Goutam Budha Nagar of UP on July 7, the accused was brought to Bhubaneswar on a 3-day transit remand.

Sanjib Kumar Parida, Chief Technology Officer of ‘IServeU Technology Pvt Ltd’, a Bhubaneswar-based Fintech Company, had registered a complaint stating that during April and May 2023, they had entered into technology integration agreements with the directors of Noida-based company M/s Payone Digital Services Pvt Ltd, providing Digital Payment Services, for facilitation of the Fintech Service, 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 M/s Payone Digital Services Pvt Ltd. On 19.06.2023, the complainant’s company came to know on reconciliation that there is a significant difference in the cash balance in their Nodal Bank account maintained with the FINO Bank.

On verification of the UPI logs, it came to light that Karan Singh and Lallu Singh both directors of M/s Payone Digital Services Pvt Ltd by manipulating the QR codes generated by the complainant company have embezzled the extra credit of approximately 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 to Payone Digital Services Pvt Ltd by the Complainant company IServeU.

Notably, it is suspected that there are many other accused involved in this complex and highly technical case. As there is no such type of case 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 an advisory so that people can be alerted.