BHOPAL: Bank accounts opened in the names of business firms/NGOs existing only on paper or in the names of individuals projecting as officials of bogus firms are being used to park proceeds of cybercrimes committed against Indians by gangs operating from Southeast Asia.
A multi-layered international cybercrime racket being run from Cambodia recently used the services of multiple inter-state rings involved in opening and providing mule accounts to park Rs 1.34 crore extorted from a retired professor and wife from Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh, by placing them under digital arrest for 28 long days.
Probe has revealed that cyber fraudsters, possibly operating from Cambodia, who posed as Mumbai crime branch sleuths, first convinced the retired professor and his wife about a SIM card issued in the professor’s name and a bank account operating in his name, having been used in laundering Rs 247 crore.
“After petrifying the elderly couple into believing that their identity proofs were used to commit major money laundering, the fraudsters kept them under digital arrest for 28 days during November-December 2025, and then extorted Rs 1.34 crore from them. The major cyber fraud was reported to the Ratlam district police, only after the couple’s son came from Canada and found his parents had become victims of a massive digital arrest fraud,” a senior police officer in Ratlam district said on Sunday.
A case was subsequently registered at the DD Nagar police station in the western MP district, and a special investigation team (SIT) was constituted to probe the fraud.
“As the investigations progressed, the detailed analysis of the IP addresses used in the crime revealed a strong possibility of the digital arrest fraud having originated from Cambodia. Subsequent investigations led the SIT to multiple rackets in different states of India, that were providing mule accounts (bank accounts used by criminals to receive, transfer or launder illicit funds) to the international racket,” Ratlam district police superintendent Amit Kumar told TNIE.
Working in the case, the SIT of Ratlam district police has so far arrested 15 persons from six states, including five from Gujarat (Jamnagar and Ahmedabad), five from MP’s Jabalpur and Neemuch, two from Assam, one each from UP and Bihar and one from Jammu.
Importantly, a young woman based in Jammu has emerged so far as the center of the mule account network in India in the concerned case.
Through her middlemen spread across the country, she was in contact with smaller gangs opening mule accounts in the name of high-school, intermediate pass and graduate jobless individuals as well as business firms, companies and NGOs, whose activities were only confined to papers.
“As many as six mule accounts opened in MP, Gujarat, Bihar, UP and Assam were used to park the Rs 1.34 crore extorted from the elderly couple of Ratlam district, before being transferred to the second layer of 64 more bank accounts, whose details are still being extracted,” Ratlam district police’s cyber cell in-charge Amit Kori said.
The six mule accounts were particularly opened in private banks under the names of business firms and NGOs operating merely on paper.
The bogus business firms, which existed only on paper, were shown in documents to have turnover, spanning between Rs 50 lakh and Rs one crore.
The graduates, intermediate and high-school pass individuals who were shown to be directors or officials of the companies/NGOs, were promised money out of the funds parked in those accounts by the fraudsters.
In case of the mule account sourced from Jabalpur (MP), there were at least four men involved, including the account holder, a middleman, the persons who got the account opened in the private bank and the person who provided that account to the upper layer of the racket being run by the Jammu-based woman Sumiran Sharma, who has emerged as the nucleus of the inter-state racket arranging mule accounts from multiple states for parking the proceeds of the crime originating from South East Asia.
Importantly, the ongoing probe have revealed that the six accounts in MP, UP, Bihar, Assam and Gujarat, were not just used to park the money extorted from the elderly couple residing in Ratlam (MP), as money was routed into those accounts from many other states, suggesting that they were being used to park money of similar cyber crimes committed elsewhere in the country.
“In just one of the accounts, a sum of Rs one crore was routed in a single day, before being transferred ahead into multiple accounts, whose details are still being tracked. Probe till now reveals that each of the six mule accounts arranged by the Jammu-based woman was used just for a day for parking the illicit money and transferring it into a second layer of 64 more mule accounts later,” SIT member, sub-inspector Jeevan Baria said.
“The Jammu woman who has told the cops following her arrest that she was working for her beau (who is on the run), kept in touch with mule account suppliers across the country, through middlemen spread in various states. She accessed the mule accounts sitting in her place by using APK files,” Baria added.
