STF busts extortion racket in Odisha and Jharkhand; arrests 2 persons impersonating ED officers

The Special Task Force (STF) of Odisha on Sunday claimed to have busted an impersonation and extortion racket operating in Odisha and Jharkhand. Two persons have been arrested on the charges of impersonating Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials.

The accused have been identified as Tarinisen Mohapatra (30) and Brahmashankar Mohapatra (27) who hail from the Dhenkanal district. Both the accused brothers are accused of impersonating Senior Officers of the Enforcement Directorate and demanding huge money from more than 300 Government officials.

The accused were arrested based on the complaint filed by Sub-Collector-cum SDM, Chhatrapur regarding the demand for money by one person impersonating the Additional Director, Enforcement Directorate. 

STF Probe Findings:

The accused brothers were maintaining a luxurious life and had borrowed huge money from their locality in Dhenkanal town area. When the borrower pressurized them to return the money, both the brothers left Dhenkanal and went to Ranchi , Jharkhand and stayed there in a rented house at Rs.10,000 per month.

The accused then started working with an NGO. But for some reason, the NGO was not working well for the last one year.
According to STF officials, the accused brothers hatched a plan to cheat the government officials like (officials of Tahasil, Collectorate, RTO, etc.) by impersonating themselves as “Additional  Director of Enforcement Directorate, Bhubaneswar”. 

"They especially chose “ED” because of the current prevailing news coverage about various ED raids. They watched and studied all ED related news articles so that they can impersonate and imitate well to scare/ extort Government officials," said STF.

The accused are very good at computer operations and created fake documents, letterheads, clearance letters, and logos among others.

"The accused received the money from Government officials from their PhonePe and GooglePay wallets. So far, STF has traced the transaction/payment of more than Rs 16 lakh," STF said in a release.