2 days ago
Three mule a/c holders held in 3cr matrimonial scam
Pune: Pimpri Chinchwad cybercrime police have arrested three mule bank account holders from New Delhi following an investigation into a complaint of a 45-year-old manager of a private firm in Pimpri Chinchwad, who lost Rs3.16 crore in a matrimonial scam between June 2023 and Sept 2024.
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The scam started when the woman, victim in the scam, came into contact with a 'US-based NRI' via a matrimonial website in May 2023. The man told her that he was running a business in Alaska and promised to marry her. They started talking and video-calling.
Later, the man started requesting the woman to help him financially and told her that he was suffering losses in business. The woman started transferring money to him.
He used to give different reasons including money for regularizing bank account in Dubai, medical treatment, repaying loans, and air-ticket expenditure from Dubai to New Delhi and New Delhi to Venezuela, the police said.
At one point, he also asked money from the victim by claiming that he was detained at Istanbul airport in Turkey, police said, adding that the woman kept providing money and eventually transferred Rs3.16 crore between June 2023 and Sept 2024.
When she came to realize that she was cheated, the woman suffered depression. It is only after her relative convicsed her to file a complaint in March 2025, she approached the police.
Senior inspector Ravikiran Nale of the Pimpri Chinchwad cybercrime police said that two teams, led by assistant inspector Pravin Swami and sub-inspector Sagar Poman, were deployed to investigate. "The teams found that Rs 3.16 crore were transferred to 81 bank accounts and from these accounts, the money went into 400 accounts.
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Most of these accounts belonged to different banks in New Delhi," he said.
The police investigations also revealed that 11 bank accounts were opened two years ago using a single rent agreement. "Sub-inspector Poman and his team reached New Delhi to trace people who opened these 11 accounts. The team found that the account holders had changed their cellphone numbers. With technical investigation, sub-inspector Poman took Sikandar Khan (21) into custody from Jonapur in Delhi.
Khan then revealed names of two more suspects, Ranjit Yadav (27) and his brother Bablu Yadav (25), both from Jonapur.
Ranjit Yadav had accepted Rs 36.96 lakh into his account," he said.
The arrested people used to contact their handler using a mobile messenger application to avoid tracing. "We have ascertained the identity of their handler and our search is underway to find other suspects in the case," said Nale.