Pramesh S Jain
While tracking down the source of the cyber crime,the Central Crime Branch (CCB)busted a gang and arrested four persons for creating mule accounts to help the cyber crooks to divert the scammed money into these accounts.
The accused according to the city police commissioner , Seemanth Kumar Singh also opened many shell companies misusing the state government owned ministry of small scale industries,portal to be used to open the bank accounts to be used for crime money transfer racket .
With their arrest,the CCB officials seized over 357 bank accounts that were being supplied to cybercriminals to be used as mules to launder the proceeds of the cybercrimes.
Probe also revealed the some bank officials suspected involvement in the scam,which is being probed further in detail .
The accused have been identified as,Lakshmeesh N,33, a loan recovery agent,Prakash H,43,a private firm employee,Sunil Kumar,45,unemployed,and Puttaswamy, 54, a car driver.
The accused are from in and around Bengaluru and probe is on to ascertain their links with the cyber crime network .
Initial investigations revealed that the accused lured many gullible people and used their credentials to help open bank accounts.The accused would take the bank details including the debit cards and operate.
The accused would also share a small amount of profit with the account holders on monthly basis in return of the favour,Mr.Singh said
The accused used different modus Operandi to create mule account.Mr.Singh said that they misused the Ministry of Micro,Small & Medium Enterprises’Udyam Portal to register in the names of daily wagers and other such people.
“For every Rs.1 lakh transaction,the account holders received Rs.4,000 as commission.We are probing if the bank account holders were also involved.Some of the mule accounts seized are also tied to shell companies,” said Singh.
The CCB also found that there were transactions amounting to crores of rupees from the said bank accounts,and over 100 cases were detected across the country registered with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) where these accounts were flagged.
Police also suspect the involvement of several others in the racket and efforts are on to track them down to ascertain their involvement .
The officials also recovered a laptop,four mobile phones and several bank accounts and cheque books and being analysed for further investigation.
