A shocking revelation has come to light regarding the rapidly increasing cyber crime in Telangana. Telangana State Cyber Safety Bureau has arrested 208 people, exposing a large network of cyber fraud in the state. Surprisingly, 15 women are also included among the arrested accused and these include people from different professions like bank employees, software engineers, lecturers and students.
Cyber Security Bureau has named this big campaign “Operation Crackdown 1.0”, which was started from February 25. During this campaign, 1,549 FIRs related to cyber fraud were registered across the state and 626 suspects were identified. According to officials, most of the arrested people were running so-called mule bank accounts. These accounts were used by cyber fraudsters for illegal money transactions. Investigation revealed that the accused used to allow their bank accounts to be used by cyber criminals and in return took commission of about 5 percent on every transaction.
Know how cyber criminals used to carry out the incident
Shikha Goyal told that the network of this gang was very wide and extended to many sections of the society. The arrested accused also include two bank employees of Bank of Maharashtra and Jubilee Hills Merchant Cooperative Bank. Apart from these, employees of private companies, software engineers, two lecturers and a government employee of the electricity department have also been arrested. The investigation also revealed that some accused were opening online bank accounts using fake identities, fake KYC documents and proxy mobile numbers. Through this, cyber criminals used to quickly transfer money from one account to another and hide their identity.
137 bank branches raided
Under this big campaign, for the first time, the police simultaneously raided 137 bank branches in the state. 137 teams of 512 policemen together investigated 1,888 suspicious bank accounts. These accounts were found to be linked to 9,451 cyber crime cases registered across the country, in which the fraud is estimated to be around Rs 100 crore. During the operation, police also seized 63 mobile phones, 208 bank passbooks and 208 check books. In one case in Warangal, the accused had transferred cyber fraud money through the accounts of his family members.
Accused of renting out bank account to cyber criminals
Officials said this action is a strong message that people who rent out their bank accounts to cyber criminals will also have to face strict legal action. TGCSB has also appealed to the banks to further strengthen the KYC process and monitoring system so that such crimes can be stopped.
