Bhubaneswar: Odisha STF today found that OTP sharing scam accused involved in Crypto trading through various Indian and foreign Exchanges. The accused are Pritam Kar of Jajpur and Saroj Kumar Nayak of Nayagarh.
Investigations revealed that the accused Pritam Kar had signed up with a leading Crpto Exchange using E- Mail ID.
Two Bank accounts and one UPI ID of the accused was linked with the said exchange. On analysis of the Crypto trade history of the particular ID, it came to surface that in the time period of two years, the volume of trade in the account was more than Rs 1 Crore.
The account had red-flag areas in terms of crypto deposits from unidentified sources majorly from exchanges namely Coinbase, FTX and Bitmart all located outside India and also transfer of Crypto assets to exchanges out of India.
Further, Investigations revealed that, the accused Pritam Kar was referred by a dubious person on the Crypto platform, having a referral history of thousands of people. The said matter is under investigation.
Investigations revealed that the accused Saroj Kumar Nayak of Nayagarh, had signed in a leading crypto exchange using E-mail ID. His User ID is linked with two saving Bank accounts number and two UPI ID’s. The volume of Crypto trade is nearly Rs 3 lakhs. In this case too,INR was withdrawn using Crypto exchanges based outside India.
In this regard, both the Crypto accounts of accused Pritam Kar and Saroj Kumar Nayak was blocked by STF
Notably, Kar was arrested on June 10 for alleged illegal business of OTP sharing, mule accounts/ pre-activated digital wallets selling to cyber criminals, including PIO/ISI agents, since 2017. He was in direct touch with at least two PIO/ISI agents, physically met them multiple times in other states and recently received Rs 1.5 lakh for selling OTP/ mule accounts/ digital wallets.
Nayak too had signed with a leading crypto exchange. His user ID is linked with two saving bank accounts number and two UPI IDs and the volume of crypto trade is nearly Rs 3 lakh. He had also withdrawn using crypto exchanges based outside India.
The crypto accounts of both the accused have been blocked, it added.
Nayak was arrested last month along with Pathanisamant Lenka, an ITI teacher and the mastermind of the scam, and 19-year-old Soumya Pattnaik for procuring pre-activated SIM cards and selling OTPs to Pakistani intelligence operatives.
Notably, the OTPs were used to create various accounts or channels on social media like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and Instagram and also on online shopping sites like Amazon, Flipkart. These were also used in opening email accounts. Most thought that these accounts were owned by an Indian, but they actually were being operated from Pakistan, the STF sources said.
