The Bhadohi Cyber Police in Uttar Pradesh have uncovered a nationwide investment and trading fraud network valued at over Rs 50 crore, resulting in the arrest of two individuals. Operating under the direction of Superintendent of Police Abhinav Tyagi and the supervision of Additional Superintendent of Police Shubham Agrawal, law enforcement teams apprehended the suspects, identified as Mannu Singh and Omprakash Gautam, from Bankat Zameen Chhanaura within the Gyanpur police station area.
A third suspect remains at large, and police are currently tracking his whereabouts. Crucially, investigators established that the financial network connects directly to a high-profile Rs 31 crore National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) bank fraud case currently being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Patna.
Fake Trading Website Fed Into Dozens of Mule Accounts
According to details shared by ASP Shubham Agrawal, the organized syndicate operated a fraudulent website named FISD PRO alongside multiple closed groups on WhatsApp and Telegram. The group targeted investors by promising high commercial profit yields on transactions, prompting more than 100 formal complaints to be registered against the network on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) from across several Indian states. To manage the illegal fund flows and layer the transaction trails, the syndicate utilized more than 50 fake “mule” bank accounts. Prompt intervention by the Bhadohi cyber team allowed authorities to freeze over Rs 30 lakh remaining in various compromised bank accounts linked to the ring.
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Fraudulent Enterprise Registration Bypassed Regular Banking Protocols
The operational methods of the syndicate involved fabricating backdated enterprise registration certificates to establish fake commercial entities. Using these forged company credentials, the group opened multiple corporate current and corporate banking accounts across major banking institutions, including UBI, BOB, IDBI, FINO, Yes Bank, Axis Bank, and ICICI Bank. To shield their true identities from regulatory verification, the operators collected Aadhaar cards belonging to unrelated individuals, altered the photographs to match syndicate members, and ran social media accounts using the compromised identities. Mannu Singh allegedly managed these operations in collusion with certain bank officials and handed over active net banking login details and transaction passwords to other members of the ring.
High Volume Account Transactions Link to Extradistrict Funds
A forensic audit of the network’s banking data showed that a single Yes Bank account operated under the name Siddharth Enterprises logged suspicious transactions worth approximately Rs 77 lakh in a span of just six days, drawing 28 independent NCRP complaints. A secondary Yes Bank account handled by the group showed questionable transactions exceeding Rs 1.03 crore. Due to the wide geographic spread of the victims, criminal cases have been registered against the operators in Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh.
The investigation revealed that the absconding suspect, Sumit Singh, a former branch manager at Kotak Mahindra Bank, is the prime accused in the parallel Rs 31 crore NHAI bank fraud case managed by the ED in Patna. Sumit Singh allegedly used forged documentation to illegally siphon off approximately Rs 31 crore from official NHAI bank accounts. The arrested suspect, Mannu Singh, alongside his wife Reema Singh, faces charges for laundering and absorbing these illegal government funds into the trading scam network. The ED has previously executed provisional asset attachment orders against Mannu Singh’s real estate properties in Bhadohi.
