Five persons arrested in mule account racket

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad police on Friday arrested five persons for allegedly opening and supplying mule bank accounts to cyber fraudsters to transfer money looted from victims. The accused reportedly collected a 10 per cent commission for facilitating the transactions.

The arrested persons were identified as Syed Abbas Ullah Hussaini, Mohammed Talha Khan, Nawab Mohammed Rahemuddin Khan, Salman and Anna.

Syed Abbas Ullah Hussaini and Mohammed Talha Khan allegedly procured mule bank accounts with the help of local people and supplied them to Babu Lal and Vijay for amounts ranging from Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 per account.

After obtaining bank account kits containing account numbers, passbooks, ATM cards, ATM PINs, linked SIM cards and customer IDs, the duo allegedly handed them over to Vijay and Babu Lal through courier services and received payments in return.

An examination of the mobile phones seized from the arrested persons revealed that they had engaged local people to open bank accounts in various banks across Hyderabad.

The investigation revealed that at least 83 accounts had been opened in the Telangana State Cooperative Apex Bank branches at Charminar, Attapur, Champapet, Saidabad, Jubilee Hills, Tarnaka, Hussainialam, Baghlinghampalli, Aghapura, Begum Bazar and Himayatnagar, besides other banks.

After obtaining details of the 83 suspected mule accounts, the police checked them on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP).

The verification revealed that 11 accounts had been used in 14 fraudulent transactions reported from different parts of the country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mouli Mareedu

Mouli Mareedu