Engineering student among two arrested
Davanagere: In a major breakthrough against mule account operators supporting cyber fraud, the city’s Cyber Crime Police have arrested two individuals, including a 19-year-old engineering student. The duo allegedly opened fake bank accounts using forged documents and helped fraudsters siphon off large sums by acting as intermediaries.
The first arrest involved Parashurama from Kunkuv village in Honnali taluk. He had set up a firm named Talented Squad Solution in Bengaluru’s Rajajinagar, posing as a job placement agency. Investigations revealed he opened six bogus accounts across nationalised and private banks.
These mule accounts were used to transfer crores of Rupees obtained through online cheating. As many as 95 cases linked to these six accounts have been registered across the country. Parashurama is now in custody, with cyber police continuing detailed interrogation.
In a separate but related case, officers nabbed the 19-year-old engineering student who maintained mule accounts in two different banks. Scrutiny of his accounts exposed details of his involvement.
Fraudsters, using a Telegram ID named “Bhumika”, first contacted the student and lured him with promises of easy earnings through an “Earn While You Learn” scheme. They assigned him the task of receiving money into his account and immediately forwarding it to UPI IDs provided by them.
The young man carried out these transfers regularly and received a commission for each transaction. Driven by greed, he later opened additional bank accounts to handle more volume. Eight cases from various parts of the country have now been traced to these accounts.
