Earlier this month, when the Pimpri-Chinchwad cyber police raided a small village in Ahilyanagar district as part of a probe, they caught a man with nine mobile phones, 23 bank passbooks, 18 cheque books and 35 debit cards. What came to light was a sophisticated cyber crime racket involving young men and a well-organized funds siphoning operation suggesting that cyber fraud rackets were now not just limited to traditional hotspots or cities but have even come to rural Maharashtra.
A team from the cybercrime police station of Pimpri-Chinchwad police were probing a case, in which online fraudsters had posed as a serving police inspector with the Maharashtra police and an officer from Reserve Bank of India.
The cyber fraudsters conned a 47-year-old general manager of an auto parts company of Rs 52 lakh after telling him that a probe into his finances had revealed that funds laundered from an international crime had been parked in his bank accounts and threatening him with digital arrest.
In over a week in April this year, the victim was coerced into transferring the money in dozens of transactions to fraudulent mule accounts on pretext of verification of his accounts by the RBI.
Realising that he has been cheated, the complainant approached the Pimpri Chinchwad cyber crime police station and an FIR was registered on June 7.
Within a couple of days of registration of the offence, the police arrested two suspects— Akash Babasaheb Pathare (28) and Avinash Shrikant Tungar (30) —from Bolhegaon village, around 50km from the district headquarters of Ahilyanagar. The duo had rented out their bank accounts to receive funds siphoned from the victim in the case. A name came up during their interrogation, one Vishal Palve (27), a resident of Ghodegaon village in Newasa taluka of Ahmednagar.
A probe into Palve’s background revealed that Palve used to be a stock market trader and also ran a scrap dealership but later came in contact with the cyber criminals. He then started working as mule handler and running the systems to funnel the siphoned funds abroad via the cryptocurrency route.
Investigation further revealed that Palve was using multiple SIM cards. In a raid conducted in the second week of June, police arrested Palve and recovered from him nine mobile phones, dozens of SIM cards, 23 bank passbooks, 18 cheque books and 35 debit cards.
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“Investigation revealed that Palve was recruiting mule account holders and was also managing their accounts with the help of two more suspects. Palve used to withdraw cash from the mule account holders and deposit the same into other accounts using a cash deposit machine to be finally converted to Tether or USDT cryptocurrency. This cryptocurrency was further sent to their international handlers operating from foreign countries,” said Assistant Inspector Praveen Swami.
All the five arrests in the case were made in the first and second week of this month, said said.
The police subsequently arrested Akshay Sadashiv Galve (27), who ran private coaching classes, and Mayur Sunil Anecha (25), who worked as a goods trader. The duo are from villages in Jamkhed taluka and were helping Palve in converting funds into cryptocurrency and funnelling them to international handlers using decentralised crypto wallets.
“All these suspects are aged between 25 and 30 and are well educated. They all belong to small villages in Ahmednagar district. This is a clear indication of how the cyber crimes are no more limited to traditional hotspots in Rajasthan or Jharkhand or other cities in India but have reached our doorstep and in villages of Maharashtra,” said senior inspector Ravikiran Nale of cybercrime police station, who is investigating the case.
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The probe was conducted under the supervision of Deputy Commissioner of Police Sandeep Doiphode and Assistant Commissioner of Police Vishal Hire.
Earlier, while speaking to The Indian Express, Vinoykumar Choubey, Police Commissioner of Pimpri Chinchwad had said, “Mule accounts remain a central concern in cybercrimes, as they facilitate the movement of siphoned money without detection. Addressing this issue is key to disrupting the operations of cybercriminals. Our teams will continue to work on dismantling the network of mule accounts and its handlers.”
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