ROURKELA: Police on Monday arrested seven persons including the relationship manager of the local branch of City Union Bank (CUB) for their alleged involvement in opening mule accounts for an organised criminal syndicate based out of Rourkela.
Rourkela SP Nitesh Wadhwani said the arrested persons including CUB employee Bipin Kumar Shaw (27) opened mule bank accounts to facilitate transfer of money generated from cybercrimes across the country and also helped in money laundering operations. Shaw reportedly worked in connivance with the other accused persons to facilitate opening of mule accounts by overlooking e-KYC norms.
Other accused persons are Palash Ghosh, Aryaan Mahandia, Waquar Khan, Vikram Singh, Ayaan Hussain and Akash Sharma, all aged between 20 and 35 years.
The SP said the mule accounts were sold or rented for Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 to members of the criminal syndicate across the country. These were used as pass-through accounts to receive fraudulent proceeds from cybercrimes including online gaming and provide layer to obscure the money trail.
He said these accounts were found involved in around 200 cyber fraud complaints/cases across India as ascertained through SAMANVAYA portal of I4C, Ministry of Home Affairs.
Around 80 passbooks, 50 debit cards and 15 cheque books of various banks, 10 Aadhaar and 20 PAN cards linked to fake accounts, four laptops and 25 mobile phones were seized from the accused. A case was registered in Rourkela Cyber Crime & Economic Offences police station under sections 318 (4), 319 (2), 336 (3), 338, 340 (2), 61(2) and, 111 (2) (b) of BNS and section 66-D of IT Act. All the accused were produced in court.
Wadhwani said mostly small banks with weak internal scrutiny and audit system were found opening such accounts. Further investigation is underway to ascertain possible involvement of other bank employees in the racket.