BHUBANESWAR: Police on Friday arrested the kingpin of a racket involved in duping people by exchanging fake currencies with authentic currency notes. The accused is Pravat Kumar Sahoo of Kujanga in Jagatsinghpur district.Sahoo’s arrest comes after two of his associates were nabbed on Tuesday. The two accused, Pradeep Maiti of Hooghly in West Bengal and Rajendra Kumar Das of Binjharpur, had lured one Rohit Kumar Verma of Ranchi by assuring to double his money.

They asked Verma to give `5 lakh in `2,000 and `500 denominations and take back `10 lakh. Maiti and Das took the money from Verma near Buddheswari temple under Laxmisagar police limits and handed over a bag to him. The victim found only papers inside the bag and raised an alarm following which the two accused were nabbed by locals from the spot and handed over to police.

The three used to telephone people randomly and lure them by assuring higher returns. Their modus operandi was to cheat the victims by telling them that they were having black money in `100 denominations and were willing to dispose it of by getting even half the amount,” Bhubaneswar DCP Anup Sahoo said.

Some of the lookalike `2,000 denomination notes seized from Sahoo had ‘Children Bank of India’ written on them instead of Reserve Bank of India.Investigation revealed that the gang members were in possession of fake gold pieces which they planned to exchange against the money given to them by the victims.

“Maiti and Das confessed that they telephoned Verma on Sahoo’s behest. We have seized `7.27 lakh cash, all genuine notes, a car and motorcycle, nine mobile phones and 98 fake gold pieces from him,” Laxmisagar IIC Dayanidhi Nayak said. Investigation is on to ascertain if they had duped any other persons in the State.