Pune cyber crime cell freezes 1.5K bank accounts of fraudsters
Rising number exposes organised crime's widespread tentacles
The Pune police cyber crime cell (CCC) has asked banks to freeze 1,500 accounts after detecting that they were used for frauds. The huge figure throws open the sheer magnitude of rising number of online crime incidents. A police official claimed that most of the fraudsters’ accounts are in Mumbai, Delhi and other cities in the country.
These accounts are opened by submitting fake PAN card, driving licence and address proof details etc. Investigators say that sometimes fraudsters pay money to people for using their bank accounts for illegal transactions.
CCC has been flooded with complaints regarding Nigerian frauds, credit or debit card cheating and fake lottery wins etc. Speaking to dna, senior police inspector (cyber) Sarjerao Babar said, “We have been freezing at least 10 bank accounts on an average per case. Once we discover that an account has been used for illegal purpose, we immediately write to the bank concerned asking them to freeze the account. But money can still be credited to the account.” Top brass officers opine that closing such bank accounts would help investigators to stop money transactions of cheaters. Babar said, ‘It would be a difficult task for cheaters to find new bank account holders. We have closed around 1,500 such bank accounts.”
The police had asked banks to freeze about 22 bank accounts in the online fraud case of retired IIT professor Sanjay Dhande. Fraudsters managed to siphon off Rs19 lakh from the bank account of the retired professor.