Gujarat has lost around ₹3,707 crore to cyber fraud over the past three financial years. Only about ₹97 crore has been recovered, leaving the recovery rate below 3%.
The figures show a worrying shift in the nature of online crime. Reported cases may fluctuate, but the amount extracted from victims is rising sharply. Gujarat recorded losses of around ₹986 crore in 2023-24. That increased to ₹1,286 crore in 2024-25 and then to approximately ₹1,435 crore in 2025-26.
The numbers suggest that fraudsters are increasingly going after high-value transactions rather than relying only on small, repeated scams. That makes recovery harder because stolen money can disappear through several accounts within minutes.
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The money trail is the real battlefield
A major part of this system runs through what investigators call “mule accounts”. These are bank accounts used to receive and move money obtained through fraud.
The account holder may sometimes knowingly participate for a commission. In other cases, people are recruited through fake jobs or attractive offers and unknowingly allow their accounts to be used. The Reserve Bank of India has warned banks for years that such accounts can be used to launder proceeds from phishing, identity theft and other frauds.
Gujarat authorities have reportedly frozen around 3 lakh suspicious mule accounts. The State has also been conducting targeted operations. In June 2026, Gujarat Police said its “Operation Mule Hunt 1.0”, launched in 2025, had uncovered cyber fraud worth ₹2,289 crore, with 638 arrests and action against 913 mule accounts.
The challenge is that freezing an account does not automatically mean the victim gets the money back. Once funds move through several accounts, investigators have to reconstruct the transaction trail and establish where the money finally went.
Banks are now looking at artificial intelligence to identify such accounts earlier. The RBI has itself been piloting “MuleHunter.AI”, an AI-based system designed to detect mule accounts, with pilots at two large public sector banks showing encouraging results.
Gujarat is tightening the policing structure
Gujarat has also changed how cyber fraud complaints are handled. According to the supplied state data, cases involving more than ₹10 lakh are investigated by specialised Cyber Crime Police Stations, while smaller cases are dealt with by local police stations.
That division creates an administrative challenge of its own. Cyber fraud rarely respects police-station boundaries, and one transaction can involve victims, mule accounts and suspects spread across several districts or even states.
The Union Government has also been trying to improve coordination through the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System. The system links police and financial institutions so that reported transactions can be traced and, where possible, stopped before the money is siphoned away. By December 2025, the system had helped save more than ₹8,189 crore across over 23.61 lakh complaints nationally.
Gujarat currently has 39 dedicated cybercrime police stations, according to Union Government data.
Why the first few minutes matter
For a victim, the most important window begins immediately after the fraud. Police and banking officials often call this the “golden hour” because quick reporting can give banks and investigators a chance to freeze funds before they move further.
The national helpline 1930 was created specifically for this purpose. The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal also directs victims of financial fraud to report immediately through 1930.
Gujarat officials have repeatedly stressed the same point. At a state-level banking and cybercrime interaction in 2026, officials highlighted faster coordination between banks and police during the golden hour as a way to prevent further movement of fraudulent funds.
The scale of the problem makes that urgency clear. Across India, citizens reported ₹22,495 crore in cyber fraud losses during 2025 alone, according to Union Government figures.
For Gujarat, the central question is no longer simply how many fraud cases are being registered. It is whether the banking and policing system can stop the money before it becomes almost impossible to trace.
What this means for you: If money is stolen online, call 1930 immediately, inform your bank through its official channel and file the complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. Waiting even a short time can give fraudsters more opportunity to move the money.
