Mumbai: Agra man held for creating bank accounts for cybercriminals

One of the accused’s associates has also been arrested and brought to Mumbai. Representation Pic

The Dahisar police have arrested an engineer with a BTech degree from Agra for creating bank accounts for civilians, into which online fraudsters would transfer their ill-gotten gains. The accused, Deepak Agarwal, would earn a commission of Rs 1,500 per transaction. The police have also arrested one of his associates, Sandeep Kushwaha, whose account was used by the fraudsters to deposit money. The arrests were done on May 20, the police said. According to the police, though Agarwal was well educated, he was jobless and ran his family's business in Aligarh. He came into contact with a gang of cyber cons who enticed him into opening bank accounts into which money earned from online scams could be routed.

Desiring to make easy money, he began working for them and after taking documents from his acquaintances, he opened fresh bank accounts in various banks in their names. He then took ATM cards and other documents and gave them to the scamsters. "The people in whose names the bank accounts were created would also receive money from Agarwal," a police officer added. The matter came to light after a cyber fraud case was registered at the Dahisar police station last year. The victim, a 61-year-old, had ordered wine from a shop whose number he found on Google. "The fraudsters tried to dupe him of Rs 1.95 lakh," said an officer.

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"Rs 1.46 lakh was deducted from the complainant's credit card and on the pretext of returning the amount, the accused asked the complainant to provide details of another bank account to transfer the excess amount. He was then duped of Rs 48,000," the officer said. After approaching his bank, the senior citizen recovered Rs 1.46 lakh but did not get back the Rs 48,000. It was later learnt that the latter amount had ended up in Kushwaha's account.

Under the guidance of Smita Patil, DCP, Zone XII, Senior Inspector Pravin Patil and Inspector Sanjay Marathe, the in-charge of the Dahisar police station's cyber unit, API Ankush Dange, and Constable Shrikant Deshpande traced the accused and brought them to Mumbai. The duo accused were produced before the court on Sunday. They have been remanded in police custody till May 26. During Agarwal's interrogation, the police learnt he had opened dozens of bank accounts for fraudsters.

May 20
Day arrests occurred