The Economic Offences Wing of Odisha police arrested six fraudsters, including a woman, on the charge of perpetrating Rs 16.71 crore fraud in a nationalised bank by impersonating as highly paid employees of PhonePe, an digital payments and financial services company.

The arrested people had availed as many as 161 Xpress Credit corporate sector loans to the tune of Rs 16.71 crore from four Bhubaneswar-based branches of the State Bank of India during the period from November 2022 to October 2023 by producing fake employment records as employees of PhonePe Private Limited.

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The arrested were remanded to jail custody after the Designated Court under Odisha Protection of Interests of Depositors Act (OPID Act), Cuttack dismissed their bail application.

After the bankers detected the fraud, a complaint was registered with the EOW.

The mastermind of the fraud racket identified as Anirbana Patnaik had taken a building on rent at Patia, Bhubaneswar to run the office of ‘Purvi Venture Private Limited’ and projected it to be the regional office of PhonePe at Bhubaneswar.

Besides, a fake lookalike e-mail of PhonePe was created by the accused persons. The accused persons later approached different branches of SBI at Bhubaneswar for Xpress Credit Loan (Personal Loan) by filing the inflated salary slip and the forged employment certificate of Phonepe.

During pre-sanction visit, the building hired by accused Patnaik was fraudulently shown as the Regional Office of PhonePe and the fake email was used to give clearance during verification that the loan applicants are the bonafide employees of PhonePe.

The fake email was being used to give the false information that the accused were the employees of Phonepe. Amounts were being sent in advance for 3-4 consecutive months to the accounts of the loanees on a particular date of a month so as to give the impression that it was the salary account of the loanees where regular salaries are being credited every month.

When the loans became stressed due to non-refund of the loan amount, fraudulent activities were suspected which necessitated an internal investigation. The probe later unmasked the loan fraud.

The arrested persons had furnished fake documents like fake employment certificates of Phonepe and inflated salary slips, EOW officials concluded.