Bhubaneswar, June 9: Police today arrested a retired captain of the Indian Navy for allegedly duping crores of rupees from nearly 200 people by allegedly providing them work relating to e-book preparation.

The job of the duped persons was to scan books and submit the scanned copies through DVDs or hard discs to enable the accused to prepare e-books for his foreign clients.

The accused is Nrusingh Prasad Patnaik, 58, a resident of Bhubaneswar. Patnaik is a recipient of a medal for planning naval operations at Kochi in Kerala during the Kargil war.

The police have come to know of a similar fraud by another firm at Kharavela Nagar in which about 250 people had been cheated. The police are probing the case.

Patnaik was promoter of APS Solutions, which hired hundreds of clients for book digitisation. "The firm started work in 2016 from Bomikhal and shifted. The victims were asked to scan pages of books and submit them in DVDs and hard discs.

One of the victims said, "Patnaik roped in me saying that he had brought the firm to the state. The firm initially paid us handsomely but later shut down its operations and decamped with our security deposit. The firm had claimed that it had secured book digitization projects from various foreign countries."

Initially, the police said, to gain the confidence of the victims had paid money to the clients and later claimed to bring major projects of book digitization worth crores. " But this time the firm demanded more money as security deposit. Some of the clients claimed they had paid security deposit to the tune of Rs 20 lakhs. Soon after receiving the security money the firm officials disappeared closing the office," said a police official.

In another incident of fraud which has similarities with this one, the Kharvel Nagar police is trying to trace two Uttar Pradesh based youths for allegedly duping crores of rupees to clients in similar manner. The firm had its office at a market complex near Complex Square. As per the complaint two directors of the Inner Quality Business Solutions Pvt Ltd, Kuldeep Sharma and Vikrant Sharma have absconded after closing the office on may 29. The company too has been accused of collecting security deposits from the victims and had provided them work for the e-books projects.