The financial plumbing behind India’s cyber fraud epidemic is drawing sustained police attention, with Pimpri-Chinchwad Police launching Operation Mule Hunt to identify, freeze and prosecute individuals who allegedly supply bank accounts used to launder proceeds of online scams. Investigators say disrupting this financial layer, rather than chasing individual fraudsters, has become central to breaking cybercrime networks that operate across state lines.
Bank Accounts Hiding in Plain Sight
Investigations have found that accounts linked to businesses ranging from small web-development firms to real estate companies are allegedly being used as conduits for fraud proceeds. In several instances, officials discovered that the companies existed only on paper, with little genuine commercial activity despite their accounts recording large, suspicious financial movements.
According to investigators, cybercriminals rarely use their own bank accounts for transactions. Instead, they allegedly recruit people through social media and messaging platforms, offering easy commissions or part-time income in exchange for account access. Some individuals hand over their accounts, ATM cards, internet banking credentials and linked mobile numbers directly; in other cases, fully operational accounts are reportedly bought outright through middlemen. These accounts then become critical links in fake investment schemes, digital arrest scams, online job frauds and matrimonial scams.
The Scale Emerging From the Numbers
Intelligence inputs routed through national cybercrime coordination systems have helped investigators identify a string of suspicious accounts. In one case, a bank account registered to a grocery business allegedly received around ₹94 lakh that was withdrawn within eleven days, with the account later found linked to complaints from multiple states. Police have since confirmed the figure at ₹93.62 lakh moved through the account within eleven days, tied to thirteen complaints filed across the country.
A second account, opened in the name of a web developer, allegedly saw cybercrime-linked transactions worth roughly ₹55 lakh in just three days, while a third, registered to a real estate entity with no active business, recorded around ₹20 lakh moving through it in a single week. As of this week, Pimpri-Chinchwad Police have registered cases against five mule account holders under the campaign, while the parallel Pune Police drive under the same banner has booked 23 account holders over transactions worth ₹11.54 crore.
From Isolated Cases to Organised Crime
Police have begun applying stricter organised-crime provisions to mule account networks rather than treating them as isolated financial offences, arguing that arranging accounts, recruiting holders, transferring funds and layering money involves coordinated activity across multiple people. This shift allows investigators to pursue the entire chain, from account suppliers and brokers to the handlers controlling the proceeds, rather than only the account holder whose name appears on paper.
The approach mirrors a wider national trend. Gujarat’s own Operation Mule Hunt has already logged staggering numbers, with its first phase uncovering ₹2,289 crore in fraud and 638 arrests, and a second phase this month exposing a ₹802 crore network built around a single fake firm, Chamunda Communication, whose accounts were linked to over a thousand complaints across 22 states. Investigators there, like in Pune, have found that shell companies registered using stolen or borrowed identity documents can open current accounts capable of absorbing crores of rupees in transactions within days.
A Warning to Ordinary Citizens
Police have cautioned citizens against renting, selling or allowing others to operate their bank accounts for quick money, warning that fraudsters often invent stories involving company payments, GST refunds, gaming winnings or loan disbursals to gain banking access. Officers stressed that account holders whose accounts are used to launder fraud proceeds can face criminal action even if they claim they were unaware of how the account was being used, a risk investigators say disproportionately affects students, homemakers and low-income individuals lured by the promise of easy commissions.
Investigators say the larger goal of Operation Mule Hunt is to dismantle the banking channels that let cybercriminal networks keep moving stolen money and targeting new victims, marking a broader shift in strategy from tracking digital footprints alone to disrupting the financial systems that sustain organised fraud.
