Bengaluru: It all started with Hulimavu police in Bengaluru South freezing a bank account, following a complaint by a person who had lost ₹ 3 crore in a fake investment online investment App. The account holder
went to the bank to inquire why his account was blocked.
The police grew suspicious as the person holding the account was not capable of even handling money in lakhs and the investigation began. Within a couple of days, they laid their hands on a 22-year-old college drop out Mohammed Uzaif and his mother Sabana Abdul Bari, who were handling more than 2500 such mule accounts and moved hundreds of crore rupees to Dubai based kingpin through these accounts.
Bengaluru city police commissioner Seemanth Kumar Singh said that the police had stopped another ₹ 240 crore money being transferred to Dubai based kingpin Prem Taneja, who was arrested earlier in connection with an IPL betting case in 2013.
While the police are exploring the legal ways of bringing Prem Taneja to India, they have also arrested nine more persons from North India.. The arrested have been identified as Ankit Kumar Singh (32), Akash Jaiswal (29) from Uttar Pradesh, Ajit Kumar Yadav (29) from Bihar, Abhishekh Singh Rathore (22), Vishwaraj Singh Shekhawat (28), Kushal Singh Chauhan (26), Pradeep SinghTanwar (30), Pitambaro Singh (30), Ajay Kumar (30) from Rajasthan and Sathyam Kumar Pandey (27) from Jharkand,
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The police realised the magnitude of the scam only during the searches, when they stumbled upon 242 debit cards, 58 mobile phones, 33 cheque books, 21 passboods, a digital payment ring and records related to cryptocurrency transactions.The police realised that all the arrested were working for the kingpin Prem Taneja.
These operators used to frequent government hospitals and maternity wards, where poor and labour class people would be admitted. The two would offer them ₹ 2000 to ₹ 5000 and make them open a bank account. After opening the account, the two used to collect debit cards, cheque books, passbooks and the SIM cards used for opening the account, along with their KYC details. These accounts would be sent to their contact in Delhi, who would use these accounts as mule accounts for the fraudulent transactions.
Prem Taneja had floated two gaming and investment websites and created mobile Apps for them. Swamiji.com was a gaming App and Neo Systems was an investment Apps. He used to lure the people offering higher profits for their investments. In the beginning, he used to double their small investments. When the investor grows greedy and starts investing more money, the account would go silent. The entire money would be transferred to the App's account through these mule accounts and there would be little chances for police to track these accounts or account holders.
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While Mohammed alone was sourcing, maintaining and controlling nearly 4200 such accounts, the company had hired a number for people all over the country and was handling close to 9000 accounts with transactions worth ₹ 240 crore. This is linked to at least 864 cyber crimes across the country.
