Rajasthan Police have uncovered a massive cyber fraud racket in Alwar that ran by selling mule accounts to cybercriminals, enabling them to launder scam money across India. Authorities confirmed that six people, including four employees of Axis Bank, were arrested on Sunday. With this, the total number of arrests in the case has risen to 16, Superintendent of Police Sudheer Choudhary said.
What the investigation revealed
During raids, police seized 26 ATM cards, 33 mobile phones, 34 SIM cards, Rs 2.5 lakh in cash, cheque books, passbooks, and two cars. According to police, the racket was selling hundreds of current and corporate accounts to fraudsters through WhatsApp and Telegram groups. These accounts were created using forged documents and later linked to fresh phone numbers and APK files, giving cybercriminals direct access to internet banking.
The accounts were used to move money from scams involving online betting, gaming, and cryptocurrency, investigators said.
Who was involved
Those arrested include Varun Patwa, a 40-year-old Udaipur native living in Gurugram, and Satish Kumar Jat, 35, from Hisar, Haryana. The Axis Bank employees arrested were identified as Sahil Agarwal (33), Gulshan Punjabi (33), Asu Sharma (23), and Anchal Jat (24). Police allege that they were opening fake current accounts with forged documents and passing them to middlemen, who then sold them to cybercriminals.
The scale of the operation
Officials revealed that this was not a small-scale fraud. More than Rs 500 crore was routed through these mule accounts. Over 4,000 complaints linked to these accounts have been filed on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, and frauds worth over Rs 100 crore have already been directly traced back to the racket.
Why mule accounts are dangerous
In cybercrime, mule accounts are highly valuable. They act as temporary pipelines to move stolen funds, making it extremely difficult to trace the original fraudsters. With bank insiders allegedly helping to create these accounts, cybercriminals had an organised system to run large-scale scams.
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