Five persons of an inter-State gang involved in online doorstep gold loan fraud were arrested by the Hyderabad Cyber Crime police from Bhubaneswar of Odisha.
The accused are Aditya Narayan Mohapatra (22), Laxmidhar Murmu (21), Pramod Nayak (23), all private employees, and two students — Soumia Ranjan Patnaik (21) and Debasish Ojha (20) from Bhubaneswar. Police froze ₹ 10 lakh in their bank accounts, seized six mobile phones, a debit card and bank passbook from their possession.
In June, Manappuram Finance Limited, Himayathnagar branch head approached Cyber Crime police stating that some unknown fraudsters phoned their branch impersonating their staff from head-office and obtained the credentials of two employees i.e. Branch Asst. Manager and Junior Assistant.
“Later by using the credentials of the employees, the culprits approved a gold loan in the name of Manappuram Doorstep Gold Loan scheme and transferred the amount of ₹ 30 lakh into their bank accounts without gold ornaments pledged and cheated the complainant company,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty said. Based on the complaint, a case was registered and police launched a probe.
According to Mr. Mohanty the accused hatched a plan to cheat Manappuram Finance Limited to get the huge amount easily through the process of Doorstep Gold Loan scheme. As per their plan the main culprit Aditya Narayan, who worked at Manappuram office in Bhubaneswar made a call to Himayathnagar branch claiming that he is from head-office and obtained the credentials of two employees, and then created two fake customer names and applied for gold loan on doorstep gold loan scheme in the name of fake customer names.
“They have provided the details necessary for providing the loan including the account details of their banks. This loan was processed with the prior verification of OTP sent to the mobile number of the fake customer,” he said. Later, using the two employees’ credentials the main culprit approved the gold loan online and transferred the loan amount to their bank account.
