Six persons arrested in Rs 16.71 lakh loan fraud case in Odisha

Bhubaneswar: Six persons were arrested in connection with a Rs 16.71 crore bank loan fraud in Odisha, the Department for Economic Crimes (EOW) sources said.

The accused were identified as Anirban Patnaik and Anupama Dash of Bhubaneswar, Tophan Rout and Satyaban Rout of Khandapada in Nayagarh district, Tukuna Mallick of Badamba in Cuttack district and Feroz Khan of Kakatpur area in Puri district.

Following a complaint by Shiba Sundara Sahoo, regional manager of State Bank of India in Bhubaneswar, the EOW initiated an investigation after registering a case on August 12.

Sahoo alleged that from November 2022 to October 2023, the accused availed 161 Xpress loans worth Rs 16.71 crore from various branches of SBI in Bhubaneswar by submitting fake and fabricated employment documents as employees of PhonePe Pvt. Ltd.

During investigation, the EOW found that the accused Anirbana had rented a building at DLF, Patia, Bhubaneswar to run the office of his company ‘Purvi Venture Pvt. Ltd.’.

However, the EOW sources added that he along with the other accused had hatched a conspiracy and passed off the building as PhonePe's Bhubaneswar regional office by pasting PhonePe signboards and stickers.

They also created a fake email address like that of PhonePe and visited various branches of SBI in Bhubaneswar to obtain Xpress Credit Loan (personal loan) meant for corporate sector by presenting the inflated salary slip and fake employment certificate from PhonePe.

It also came to light that the accused received 35 percent of the loan amount from the borrowers to get it approved in their favor. The fake email was used to spread the false information that the accused were employees of PhonePe.

“On a particular day of the month, amounts were transferred into the borrowers' accounts for three to four consecutive months in advance to create the impression that it was the borrowers' salary account into which regular salaries were transferred every month,” said sources at EOW.

The SBI discovered the loan fraud worth millions during an internal investigation into the bank.