RAJNANDGAON, Feb 1: Police in Chhattisgarh’s Rajnandgaon district have busted an international cyber fraud syndicate with the arrest of four persons who allegedly provided several mule accounts to Cambodia-based scammers and transferred Rs 10 crore from victims of fraud, an official said on Saturday.
One of the accused, Shrenik Kumar Sanghvi (24), a resident of Valsad in Gujarat, allegedly handled the mule accounts and transferred money deposited in them to international scammers through ‘hawala’ and cryptocurrency, Rajnandgaon Superintendent of Police Mohit Garg said.
He said the other three arrested men, Ashutosh Sharma, Shubham Tiwari (26) and Deepak Naredi (27), were all natives of Rajnandgaon district.
The official said the fraud came to light after the accused used the bank account of Rupesh Sahu, who operates a citizen service delivery centre in Rajnandgan, for illegal transactions.
On January 23, Sahu complained to the police that his account with a nationalised bank had been frozen after his friend Ashutosh Sharma allegedly used it for multiple transactions involving money collected through fraud, he said.
Garg said that a first information report was registered against Sharma, who was called for interrogation.
He said Sharma revealed that at the behest of Sanghvi alias Ajay Meher of Gujarat, he, Tiwari, Naredi (Rajnandgaon) and other associates provided bank accounts of Sahu, their family members and other acquaintances for fraudulent activities.
The official said Sanghvi was arrested from Valsad on January 25 and brought to Rajnandagon.
Garg said, “During interrogation, he revealed that he travelled to Cambodia in June 2024 with his other Indian associates, and they visited a call/scam centre operated from a casino there. Sanghvi and others stayed there for a week and provided bank accounts of Indians to scammers in Cambodia who duped Indians in connivance with some Chinese nationals.”
Sanghvi later returned to India and came in contact with the other accused, who provided details of bank accounts, chequebooks, ATM cards, registered mobile numbers, he said.
“Scammers from Cambodia transferred money after duping people online into the mule accounts, and Sanghvi withdrew money in cash, cheque and UPI from these accounts and further transferred the same to his Cambodian-based handlers after converting it into cryptocurrency or through hawala,” he said.
The official said Sanghavi received 8 to 9 per cent commission on the transferred amount, while Sharma got 4 per cent commission, and the other two accused got up to Rs 35,000 per mule account, he said.
The official said as per the probe, the accused were involved in transferring Rs 10 crore in 50 mule accounts, and the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and Samanvay Portal of the Home Ministry of India confirmed this.
He said the police have also received information about cyber fraud worth crores of rupees in the name of online task completion, providing jobs, investments in fake companies and matrimonial websites from different parts of the country using these bank accounts.
The official said action will also be taken against account holders who deliberately provided their accounts for fraudulent activities. (PTI)
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