The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha Police has arrested a cybercriminal from Haryana on the charge of duping a Bhubaneswar-based woman journalist to the tune of Rs 1.5 lakh in a fake drug courier scam.

The accused Rajat Kumar of Mohalia, a native of Yamuna Nagar district in Haryana, was arrested after the EOW had registered a complaint on the report of Ratna Tripathy, a journalist of Nayapalli locality in Bhubaneswar.

According to the complaint, on 19 June 2023, 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, a laptop, five ATM cards, 150 grams of Narcotics drugs had been sent to her and has been intercepted by the Narcotics Control Bureau, Mumbai officials.

When she denied sending or ordering any parcel, the caller asked her to come down personally to the Narcotic Bureau Cell, Mumbai, to clarify her point and if she cannot attend physically, she can be connected to Narcotic Bureau, Mumbai over Skype. If she ignores this, she will be prosecuted under various charges including narcotics case and money laundering, the complaint maintained.

Accordingly, she connected to Skype, the site of Mumbai Narcotic Bureau and a person who introduced himself as Mr Gill, Head of the Narcotic Bureau Cell, Mumbai, told her that a case of money laundering, narcotics smuggling and violation of Crypto norm has been filed against her due to the illegal transactions through her bank accounts. Besides, they told her that she has links with gangster Islam Malik.

She was advised to send Rs 1.5 lakh to a particular account number for the RBI for verification in order to prove her innocence.

Out of panic, the complainant 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 off line, and her money was never returned as assured.

During investigation, it was found that it is a huge scam using the name of courier companies and faking as NCB, CBI, ED, Police Officers, etc, the EOW officials said.

As the scammers use the name of a real NCB/CBI/ED/IPS Officer, 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, they said.

The EOW investigators also found that scammers, in just 2-3 days, had extorted Rs 5.58 crore from several 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 an ATM in Dubai, UAE.

The EOW has elicited vital clues regarding masterminds of this scam, based in Dubai. Efforts are on to arrest them.

Further, so far 17 incriminating bank accounts have been frozen in this case. Investigation of the case is continuing, the EOW concluded.