SRINAGAR: Security agencies have busted a vast network of “mule accounts” operating in Jammu and Kashmir amid concerns that funds funnelled through these may have been diverted to fuel separatist and anti-national activities in the Union Territory.
Sources said over 8,000 mule accounts have been identified and frozen across Jammu and the UT in the past three years.
They said the security agencies believe that the NIA cracked down on illegal money flows in 2017, and anti-national groups shifted to a new form of “digital hawala”.
According to sources, the investigators believe the network functioned as the financial backbone of international scam operations, enabling stolen funds to be layered, transferred and ultimately converted into untraceable crypto-currency.
The central agencies have directed J&K Police and other agencies probing the issue to coordinate closely with banks and financial institutions to curb the mushrooming of such accounts and identify the middlemen known as “mulers”, who facilitate the fraud.
Sources said detecting a money trail through the mule accounts is deliberately complex. “The funds are rapidly shifted across multiple accounts and broken into smaller amounts to evade detection before being converted into cryptocurrency through private digital wallets,” they said.
They cited a recent case in J&K, where police successfully traced and recovered nearly Rs 40 lakhs out of Rs 52 lakhs in a major cyber arrest fraud case involving a retired Air Force officer, who was subjected to “digital arrest fraud” for nine days.
“The police sleuths investigating the case traced beneficiary bank accounts and followed the money trail across multiple financial layers. Within three hours of receiving the complaint, police investigators traced `11.90 lakh to a suspected Yes Bank account in Jodhpur,” a police official said.
The efforts led to an additional `28 lakhs in a second layer of suspected accounts. The amount was instantly placed on hold by invoking the newly issued SOP.