Gandhinagar, Jul 17 (PTI) Three persons were arrested for allegedly creating fake firms and opening multiple ‘mule accounts’ to facilitate cyber frauds worth more than Rs 2.86 crore across 18 states, Gujarat police officials said on Friday.
Ahmedabad residents Nikunjkumar Rajubhai Patel, Dixit Jagdishbhai Patel and Sumit Vishnubhai Soni were arrested by Cyber Centre of Excellence, Gandhinagar, under ‘Operation Mule Hunt 2.0’, a statewide drive against organised cybercrime networks and mule account operators, the officials said.
“The accused created two bogus firms, ‘Travelflux Private Limited’ and ‘Travocrest Private Limited’, opened a total of 12 bank accounts, and obtained around 60 mule bank account kits and SIM cards linked to the registered mobile numbers of those accounts,” said Superintendent of Police Rajdeepsinh Zala.
Using these 12 bank accounts, 54 cyber fraud incidents amounting to more than Rs 2.86 crore were executed across 18 states in India, he said.
“Their modus operandi involved creating false identities through SMS, WhatsApp, and Telegram and luring people by offering opportunities to earn large sums of money. They obtained bank accounts from people in different states of India on commission basis and used those accounts to receive fraud proceeds,” Zala explained.
Later, to obtain OTPs required for committing the offences, scammers persuaded victims to download a ‘DOTP.APK’ file sent by them. They also received payments through Leo Pay, an official release said.
“The frauds include an internet banking deposit scam involving Rs 93 lakh in Bihar, an investment fraud of Rs 70 lakh in Karnataka and a digital arrest scam of Rs 38 lakh in Maharashtra,” the release said, adding Dixit Patel was the alleged mastermind behind the digital arrest fraud.
A new method has emerged in this case, the official said. “To transfer large sums of money of cyber crime, the accused used Merchant ID (MID) accounts that payment gateway companies usually issue to small merchants for accepting payments,” Zala said.
To obtain these MID accounts, the scammers allegedly paid large sums of money to Paytm approving agents, who opened MID accounts linked to mule accounts, thereby facilitating cyber fraud, the release noted.
In this case, the scammers, along with Paytm approving agents, allegedly opened 38 MID accounts in the names of the two fake travel companies, it said.
“They configured the system so that if a cyber fraud acknowledgement number (ACK) was generated against a particular MID account, only the amount in that MID account would be placed on hold, while the mule account details would not appear in the ACK,” the release added.
Among the items seized from the accused are six mobile phones, eight cheque books, 31 debit and credit cards, and one laptop.
Further investigation is underway, police said. PTI KVM BNM
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