The Odisha Special Task Force (STF) has busted an inter-State extortion racket with the arrest of two cons, who impersonated as senior officers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and demanded huge amounts from more than 300 government officials.
The fake ED officers were identified as Tarinisen Mohapatra (30) and Brahmashankar Mohapatra (27), two brothers from Dhenkanal district. They were operating an extortion racket in Odisha and neighbouring Jharkhand.
The accused brothers were arrested on Saturday under Sections 419/420/384/388/506/120(B) of IPC following a complaint by Chhatrapur Sub-Collector-cum-SDM Debadutta Mohanta. The STF seized articles including a Lenevo-make laptop, a Lenevo Desktop (Monitor and CPU), five mobile handsets (iphone, OnePlus, Realme), bank passbooks and cheque books, fake identity cards issued by NGO UPKAR CPLI Project and 17 fake ATM-cum-debit cards from their possession.
As per the complaint, one of the accused persons impersonating as Additional Director, ED, demanded money from the Chhatrapur Sub-Collector.
During investigation so far, the STF has found that the accused duo was maintaining a luxurious life, for which they borrowed huge money in their locality Dhenkanal town area. When the borrowers pressurised them to return the money, both brothers left Dhenkanal and moved to Ranchi in Jharkhand temporarily where they stayed in a rented house at Rs 10,000 per month.
The probe revealed that the accused brothers worked in an NGO UPKAR, which operates in Ranchi. As the NGO was not functioning well for last one year, to maintain their luxurious life, both brothers hatched a plan to dupe government officials by impersonating themselves as Additional Director of ED, Bhubaneswar.
They watched and studied all ED-related news articles so that they could impersonate and imitate well to scare/extort government officials. They are very good in computer operations and created fake documents in computer. They created lots of fake documents, letterheads, clearance letter, logo, etc. They procured 02 SIMS (one from Odisha and one from Ranchi, Jharkhand) and made voice/ WhatsApp calls to officials of different State Government Departments by collecting the officials’ mobile numbers from the Web Directory and other sources.
They also saved their number in “True Caller” and WhatsApp profile name as: “Sanjay Mishra ED”. They identified themselves as Sanjaya Mishra, Addl. Director, Enforcement Directorate. They would generally tell a government official that one complaint case has been instituted against him which was received from the Vigilance Department relating to a corruption case and the ED is about to begin enquiry snnd raids against him, the STF stated in a release.
“If any government officials did not respond their voice /WhatsApp calls, they sent SMS/ WhatsApp message as “This side Sanjaya Mishra, Director of Enforcement Department …. My investigation officer trying to connect you but you did not attend the call. Make an instant call. It’s very urgent else I can’t control the vigilance,” the STF stated.
The STF revealed that the accused duo asked for money to settle/close the so-called case/enquiry. They called around 340 government officials. However, in most of the cases, they could not succeed to extort money, but in some cases they succeeded. They received the money from officials from their PhonePe and GooglePay wallets. So far, the STF has traced the transaction/payment of more than Rs 16 Lakh.
The investigation is on to find out whether they have done similar impersonation/extortion targeting Jharkhand Government officials too as they were also staying in Ranchi, Jharkhand. After receiving the demanded money, the accused persons sent fabricated clearance letter (of Enforcement Directorate and Central Vigilance Commission) to the concerned government officials, the STF said.
