Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Odisha police has arrested a fraudster from Bhubaneswar for allegedly cheating people through a fake loan mobile app, the police said on Sunday.
The accused identified as Tarun Dudeja, a resident of Sector- 48, Gurgaon was arrested on May 14 for his role in lending money at a high-interest rate and harassing the defaulters through coercive methods.
The IWT India was working as a shell company to divert the money and its proprietor Saifi used to get a small commission for it, the police officials said.
The police found that crores of rupees had been transacted through the account of IWT India, and Saifi, the account holder, was not able to give satisfactory answers about the transactions, it said.
“41 postpaid SIM cards in the name of various other persons were seized from him. He along with Javed Sahifi used to lure their employees/ interested/vulnerable/poor people to allow them to open bank accounts and take SIM cards using their name,” an EOW release said.
“These accounts would be used to channelize the money collected through illegal loan APPs. The
mobile/SIM numbers connected to these bank accounts would be actually handled by the fraudsters. All the related information/ call/ OTP would land on these mobile numbers which are handled by fraudsters, not by the actual/official account holder,” the release read.
“This mechanism is used to create extra layers to confuse/ distract law enforcement agencies/
police. Generally, they use 3-4 layers before the money is landing in the mastermind’s account. They disclosed that they pay around Rs one to two lakh to the person concerned for allowing the bank account/ SIM to be used as Mule Account,” it added.
