The investigation into the cyber fraud case in which an elderly NRI couple was duped of over ₹14 crore has revealed that the suspects used eight primary bank accounts to receive the proceeds, and then transferred the money in “extremely small amounts” to over a thousand mule accounts, police said on Monday.
According to police, the eight bank accounts — registered across various states — were opened using the names of NGOs, chemical manufacturing companies, job consultancies, and travel agencies. The money from these bank accounts was further transferred to mule accounts in tiny amounts of ₹50-100 and later withdrawn by the suspects involved in the crime, police said.
The police on Saturday had arrested three people from Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh in connection with the case. Suspects Divyang Patel and Krutik Shitoli were arrested from Vadodara, while KS Tiwari was held from Prayagraj, UP.
A senior police officer on Monday said: “Patel and Shitoli had been running a fake NGO for years, and received ₹4 crore in two transactions — on December 29 and December 30. We have found that six other transactions were made to accounts registered in Delhi, Mumbai, Wazirpur (UP), Guwahati, Kolkata and Belada (Uttarakhand).”
Police said that the three suspects revealed that they had never met their other associates. “We have found that they were all linked through social media groups. They were instructed by their China and Cambodia-based handlers. We suspect a lot of the cheated amount has been converted to bitcoin or has been withdrawn.”
Talking about the money stolen from the couple’s bank account by the cyber fraudsters between December 26 to January 9, a police officer said: “Our probe revealed that the elderly woman transferred ₹4 crore to two different accounts based in Vadodara. Earlier, she had sent ₹1.9 crore to an account in Assam’s Guwahati on December 26. On January 2, the woman was coerced into transferring ₹2 crore to an account registered in Delhi. Three days later, she sent another ₹2 crore to an account in Mumbai and, on January 6, she sent an additional ₹2.2 crore to an account in UP’s Wazirpur. On January 8, she sent ₹2.2 crore to a Kolkata-based account. The last transaction was made on January 9 to an Uttarakhand-based account.”
