1st of its kind, QR manipulation fraud worth Rs. 14cr unearthed in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: In one of the rarest and newest type of Cyber Financial fraud, EOW detected a case of huge cyber financial fraud in which more than Rs 14 Crores has been siphoned off by manipulating QR codes of a Fintech company.

Economic Offences Wing, Bhubaneswar has arrested accused Karan Kumar Singh, a resident of Cec-19, Noida, UP, from Noida, UP, on 06.07.2023 in EOW PS Case No.21 dt.29.06.2023 U/s 420/406/467/468/471/120-B IPC, r/w Sec. 65 & Sec 66 (D) of IT Act.

The accused was produced before the CJM, Goutam Budha Nagar, UP, on 07.07.23 and was brought to Bhubaneswar on the strength of three days transit remand for his production before the Designated Court under OPID –cum- SPL COURT for EOW, at Cuttack.

This case was registered on the report of Sanjib Kumar Parida, Chief Technology Officer of ‘IServeU Technology Pvt Ltd.’, a Bhubaneswar based Fintech Company with the allegation that during April-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 Finotech Service, and accordingly IServeU had extended its UPI API to the company for the commercial utilization. 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 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.

The QR Codes generated by the complainant company have embezzled the extra credit of Rs.14.33 Crores approx. 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 hared to Payone Digital Services Pvt. Ltd by the Complainant company IServeU.

It is suspected that there are many other accused are also involved 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.