Government freezes 4.5 lakh 'mule' bank accounts used by cybercriminals

The Central government has in the past one year frozen around 4.5 lakh “mule” bank accounts which are being used for laundering money from cybercrimes.

According to The Indian Express, a majority of such accounts were found with the State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Airtel Payments Bank.

The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) recently conveyed this to the Prime Minister’s Office, the daily said.

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Banks with most mule accounts

The officials pointed out that fraudsters were withdrawing money using cheques, ATMs and digitally from such accounts that are usually created with KYC documents of another person.

Further, according to the report, around 40,000 mule bank accounts were detected in SBI, some 10,000 in the Punjab National Bank, about 7,000 in Canara Bank, 6,000 in Kotak Mahindra Bank and some 5,000 in Airtel Payments Bank.

“Around 1 lakh cyber complaints have been registered with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal since January 2023, and around ₹17,000 crore in cash has been defrauded in the last one year,” a source was quoted as saying.

Also read: Amit Shah urges agencies to use AI for checking cybercrimes 

Loopholes identified

The Prime Minister’s Office was told that an inter-ministerial panel had identified the loopholes and told the police forces in states and Union Territories to take proactive action against such accounts.

The role of bank managers and officials in opening such mule accounts will also be probed.