Ashish Pandey 
Bhubaneswar:
An Odisha MLA and former information technology minister has lost Rs 1.4 to cyber fraud in around one-and-a-half months, a senior police officer said here on Monday.
The police arrested seven people – four from Karnataka and three from Tamil Nadu – in connection with the case.
The former minister, who lodged a police complaint in this regard in January, however, claimed that a friend of his had been using his trading account and lost the money.
The accused and their associates used to pose as trade analysts and persuade people to invest money into initial public offerings (IPOs), shares, and other forms of trading, promising them high returns, the police officer said.
During the investigation, the cybercrime unit of the Crime Branch found that the accused people fraudulently obtained Rs 1.40 crore from the complainant between November 13, 2024 and January 1, 2025, he said.
“On January 13 this year, we received a complaint that cyber fraudsters swindled Rs 1.4 crore from the complainant through a mobile app,” Crime Branch IG Sarthak Sarangi told a press conference.
He, however, did not name the complainant stating it may hamper the investigation.
Police sources said the complainant is a sitting MLA, a former information technology minister and an IIT graduate.
BJD MLA and ex-IT minister Tusharkanti Behera, however, told reporters: “My friend has been using my trading account and lost the money to cyber fraud. I have no such direct knowledge regarding the fraud,” Sarangi said the money has been sent to bank accounts in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, West Bengal, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, and Maharashtra.
In the first phase, crime branch teams were sent to Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala and they arrested seven people.
“Very soon we will send our teams to Hyderabad, West Bengal and Delhi to arrest other accused persons in this case,” the police officer added.
So far, the Crime Branch has been able to recover Rs 4 lakh from the accused people and has frozen Rs 15 lakh in their bank accounts, he said.
A university vice-chancellor and a Navy officer have become victims of cyber frauds in the recent past, Sarangi said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
