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Business News›News›Politics and Nation›Paytm boss blackmailed by personal secretary and accomplices

Paytm boss blackmailed by personal secretary and accomplices

Threatened

Threatened

Paytm founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, became the victim of an extortion racket allegedly led by his longtime confidante and communication head of company. Sharma's former secretary Sonia Dhawan claimed to be in possession of data that included his personal information on Sharma that she is suspected to have stolen as she had access to his laptop, phone and office desktop.

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Culprit under the table

Culprit under the table

Even as her boss was being besieged by the extortion calls on messaging app WhatsApp - Sonia Dhawan, Vice-President of communications for Paytm and Sharma’s personal secretary, allegedly offered him a single piece of advice, “just pay up,” according to police officials, who are investigating the high-profile case following the arrest of Dhawan, her husband Rupak Jain and another Paytm employee Devendra Kumar on Monday.

The trio face charges of attempting to extort Rs 30 crore from the Paytm founder by threatening to leak personal data.

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Perfect Insider

Perfect Insider

Sonia Dhawan emerged as the ‘perfect insider’ as she controlled the extortion calls made by a fourth accomplice based in Kolkata while also convincing her boss to pay up.

“She was in contact with both the parties. She knew these calls were coming. The complainant (Paytm’s Sharma) has told us she convinced him “ki abhi pay kar dijiye aap, kya pata kaisa data ho (pay up for now, god knows what kind of data may be there),” according to Ajay Pal Sharma, Noida’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP).

Her constant refrain is what triggered doubts in Sharma’s mind and “prompted him to alert us on a few names that he suspected since this was personal data,” he said.

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Global names attached

Global names attached

Paytm, which is backed by some of the world’s most influential investors including billionaire Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathway, released an official statement on the developments on Tuesday saying “this is a case of personal data theft of Vijay Shekhar Sharma, where three arrests were made yesterday. Paytm would like to reiterate that all our consumer data is protected with the highest and most impenetrable levels of security.”

Japan’s SoftBank and Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba are also key investors in the digital payments provider.

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What's on stake

What's on stake

Sonia Dhawan was managing personal data of Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Data included the ATM, email and all personal passwords.

The police said they have recovered a hard disc with “Paytm personal information and secret data”, a pen drive which has “calls/chat records of extortion”, printouts of the WhatsApp chats and four mobile phones.

The extortion calls were being made by WhatsApp calling feature.

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Reuters
Underlying motive

Underlying motive

There are no clear answers to the question of why Dhawan whose career saw a meteoric rise in the company coupled with enviable clout allegedly committed this crime. Dhawan earned an annual salary of Rs 70 lakh and owned equity worth Rs 10 crore in the company.

Lately, the Paytm bosses say, she had discussed with them that she wanted to buy a new house. As on March 2017, Dhawan owned 1,400 vested shares in Paytm-owner One 97 Communications, which at the latest share price of Rs 12,797 would have been worth Rs 1.79 crore, according to filings with Registrar of Companies.

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Spilling the beans

Spilling the beans

The police statement also pointed to the failing financial condition of her husband Rupak Jain, who dabbled in real estate. Rupak Jain was reportedly unemployed for a while now as his business had gone bust. The couple had a flat in Noida’s Sector 120 but wanted to buy a new, bigger house according to police sources.

Devendra Kumar, the other Paytm employee and a co-accused who worked in the same office, told that Dhawan had stolen some data and asked him to store it in his phone so that they could together blackmail Paytm founder Sharma.

Police sources said the first call to the Paytm founder came on September 20 with a demand for Rs 30 crore. Later, the amount was scaled down to Rs 10 crore. Sharma first transferred Rs 67 on October 10 in order to check details of the bank account number which was furnished. He then transferred an additional Rs 2 lakh on October 15 while alerting the police simultaneously, sources said. Once identified as the caller, Chomal revealed that he was promised a cut of 20% in the extortion amount and furnished names of Dhawan, Jain and Kumar, who were subsequently arrested.

Dhawan was picked up from her office in the Paytm headquarters in Noida on Monday.

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