Two persons have been arrested for their alleged involvement in a racket that used to create fake companies and subsequent mule accounts for the transaction of money earned through fraudulent means, police said.
The racket was headed by the branch manager of a nationalised bank.
The cyber wing of the state CID arrested Himanshu Solanki, 32, and Praveen Kumar, 29, from Faridabad in Haryana on Sunday for allegedly creating fake documents, including Aadhaar cards and PAN cards, and also creating fake companies against them.
“Bank accounts were opened against those fake companies where their ill-gotten gains were transferred,” said an officer.
Mule accounts are bank accounts that facilitate illegal transactions by receiving and transferring funds from unlawful activities, with or without the complicity of the account holders.
The money transacted through fake companies created by the duo, was allegedly sent to the bank accounts of the branch manager and his wife, a senior officer said.
The duo was sent to police remand for 12 days by a court in Hooghly.
In February, a branch manager of a nationalised bank was arrested by the Bengal CID in the same case for allegedly creating mule accounts used for siphoning funds from people duped into an investment fraud.
The fraud was reported earlier this year when a resident of Chandernagore in Hooghly complained that he was duped out of several lakhs after he invested in cryptocurrency, seeing an advertisement on social media.
During the investigation, police found that the money that the Chandernagore resident invested had been transferred to multiple e-wallets registered in the name of various private limited companies, connected to bank accounts located in Haryana, Delhi and Punjab; and parts of west India.
“Transactions in crores were spotted in these bank accounts. While doing a deep analysis of these accounts, we found that in the second layer of transfers, several bank accounts in Birbhum, Murshidabad, South and North 24-Parganas were found to be involved. Out of these, at least six bank accounts in a particular branch in Birbhum were in the name of one person who later turned out to be the branch manager of a bank in Murshidabad,” said a senior officer of the state CID.
CID sleuths had found that the bank manager was one of the direct beneficiaries of the proceeds of the crime. Similarly, police said the arrested duo from Haryana had also received siphoned funds in the mule accounts.
Website cloned
The website of a reputable gold jewellery store was cloned to dupe the franchisee in the name of the company, police said.
Hariom Singh, 30, from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested in connection with the case by the state CID on Sunday.
CID officers said Singh allegedly opened a bank account using fake Aadhaar credentials and transferred the money defrauded from the franchisee.
“The total defrauded amount is around ₹29 lakh. The accused executed the fraud by opening a fake website in the name of a reputable jewellery store, assuring the victims a franchise agreement,” a police officer said.
The accused has been remanded to police custody for seven days.