BENGALURU: In a massive statewide operation in connection with mule bank accounts used by cyber fraudsters to receive money from their victims, Cyber Crime Police officers attached to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested 13 masterminds by identifying over 42,000 suspicious accounts.
All the 29 CEN police stations across the state have been instructed to collect information on suspicious accounts. Fraudsters paid Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 to actual account holders to use their accounts to collect money. Simultaneous raids were conducted at over 100 locations in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Davanagere, Mangaluru and Belagavi.
“The actual account holders were reportedly unaware of any transactions made in their accounts. Most of them are daily wage labourers. Whenever details of bank accounts were found out in any cyber frauds, they led us to actual account holders. Only when they were questioned, would they know that their bank accounts were used for wrong purposes,” an officer said.
A big syndicate involved in providing mule accounts to cyber criminals has been detected by the CID, under which the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) falls.
“People should not share their bank account details, ATM cards or passwords with anyone. Sharing such information for commission is a serious criminal offence. The statewide operation is the result of months of intelligence gathering. The accused also collected ATM cards from unsuspecting citizens. Laptops, several mobile phones, debit cards and SIM cards have been seized during the raid,” said an officer.