Thane man whose account was used in 106 cyber fraud offences held: Police
The accused, identified as Vinayak Baranwal, told the police that while his account was operational since 2021, it was over the past three to four months that he was offered a commission in exchange for providing his bank account to transfer money obtained through cyber fraud, an official said.
The north region cyber police arrested Banarwal while investigating a case where a Dahisar resident lost Rs 27.44 lakh in an investment scam.
An official said that while going through his account, they found that in 106 cases of cyber crimes across the country, money had been transferred to his account.
An officer said that during interrogation, the accused, who is into auto insurance, claimed that a few months ago, one of his friends told him that he could earn commission by just allowing his account to be used by others.
The officer said that since the past four months, a few crores came to his account including Rs 2.3 lakh of the Rs 27.44 lakh that had been siphoned off the account of a 58-year-old woman from Dahisar.
On June 3, she was added to an WhatsApp group for investment and over a period of time she was made to download an app and under various pretexts asked to pay Rs 27.44 lakh.
'In order to evade law enforcement agencies, cyber criminals break down the siphoned amount into small sums and transfer it through various bank accounts,' an official said.
'In this case, we were tracing Rs 4 lakh that had been transferred from the account of the Dahisar resident. Of this, we saw Rs 2.3 lakh came to the account of the accused and the money was soon transferred to another account. When the police checked the various accounts, only the accused's account was active following which he was arrested,' the official added.
The police are still looking for the masterminds who carried out the scam.
In a majority of these cases especially related to investment scams, Indians duped into going to Southeast Asian countries are made to carry out the crimes.
The money is routed through various bank accounts and then converted into crypto currency and sent abroad.
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