Chandigarh: Punjab police’s state cybercrime wing on Thursday claimed to have busted an inter-state mule account racket involved in duping thousands of victims of crores of rupees across the country with the arrest of four persons.
A mule account is a bank account used by criminals to receive, transfer, or launder illicit funds without the knowledge or sometimes with the complicity of the account holder.
Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab, Gaurav Yadav, said those arrested have been identified as Gautam, 23, Ehsas, 24, and Akash, 20, trio residents of Amritsar, and Anmol, 21 from Fazilka.
Police have also effected a huge recovery of cash amounting to Rs 10.96 lakh, along with nine mobile phones, one laptop, 32 debit cards, 10 SIM cards, 15 bank passbooks and one cheque book from their possession, DGP Yadav said.
He said that the racket was involved in obtaining bank accounts, especially from economically weaker sections for a small amount, and then using them to layer and transfer fraudulent funds acquired through various cybercrimes. “The accused were actively operating this criminal ecosystem for the last two years, using hundreds of mule accounts from different banks across Punjab to transfer illicit money abroad through cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance and DCX,” he said.
Sharing details of the operation, Special Director General of Police (Special DGP) Cyber Crime V Neeraja said that based on Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) hotspot analysis, an FIR was registered against 300 mule accounts of Punjab Gramin Bank and investigation traced 100 mule accounts to one location, in Abohar.
She said that the investigation revealed the accused were part of multiple cyber fraud groups on the Telegram platform, with admins suspected from South-East Asia managing the ecosystem.
ADVISORY
Police advised the public not to provide their bank accounts or SIM Cards issued in their name to anyone on pretext of small money or any job offer, etc. as the same are further used for Cyber fraud crimes.
If anyone becomes a victim of cyber fraud, they should immediately call Helpline 1930 to report and protect their money from going to the hands of cyber fraudsters, the police said.
