India’s digital payments and e-wallet company Paytm said on Tuesday its consumer data was safe after police arrested three people, including the company’s spokeswoman, over allegations they tried to blackmail its founder and extort nearly Rs 20 crore by threatening to leak personal data.
“This is a case of personal data theft of Vijay Shekhar Sharma, where three arrests were made yesterday,” the company said in a statement. “Paytm would like to reiterate that all our consumer data is protected with the highest & most impenetrable levels of security.”
The company said it would not comment further, pending the police investigation.
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Earlier on Minday, three Paytm employees were arrested for allegedly trying to extort Rs. 20 crore from the e-wallet giant’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma after threatening to leak stolen personal data and confidential information.
The arrested woman, who allegedly masterminded the extortion bid is Sharma’s secretary. All three of them had threatened to leak the data and misuse the information to cause loss to the firm and dent its public image, officials said.
The three employees of the Noida-headquartered firm were arrested by a team from the Sector 20 police station, while the fourth accused in the case is still at large, a senior official said.
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“The owner of Paytm had made a complaint with the police that their employees, a woman and her aides, had stolen some data from the company and were blackmailing. They were demanding Rs 20 crore for not leaking it,” Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ajay Pal Sharma told NDTV on Monday.
“Taking immediate action on it, an FIR was registered and three persons, including the woman, arrested. They are being probed about the data and their modus operandi. Police will share the facts as they are unearthed,” Sharma said.
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