Odisha crime branch’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has detected a cyber fraud in which more than Rs 14 crore was siphoned off by manipulating the QR codes of a fintech company.

The EOW has arrested the accused Karan Kumar Singh from Noida in Uttar Pradesh.

“The accused was produced before the chief judicial magistrate (CJM), Noida, UP, on Friday and was brought to Bhubaneswar on the strength of three days transit remand for his production before the designated court at Cuttack. We suspect a Chinese link in the scam,” said J.N. Pankaj, deputy inspector general (DIG) of police, state task force, crime branch.

The EOW in a media release said: “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 utilisation.”

Karan Kumar Singh and his brother Lallu Singh are the directors of M/s Payone Digital Services Pvt. Ltd. On June 19, 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 Payments 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 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,” the release said.

The EOW further said it is suspected that there are many other people involved in this complex and highly technical case.