Police in Maharashtra’s Wardha district have busted an interstate cybercrime racket that recruited poor individuals, job seekers and students to open bank accounts later sold to online gambling and cricket betting operators. Six accused have been arrested so far, with investigators alleging the accounts were used to process suspicious transactions worth several crores of rupees.
How the Racket Recruited and Sold Accounts
According to the investigation, the accused lured people with promises of finance-related employment, convincing them to open accounts at various banks. Once opened, the gang allegedly took possession of the account holders’ ATM cards, passbooks and SIM cards, then sold these complete “account packages” to cybercrime operators for ₹10,000 to ₹15,000 each.
The case surfaced after Wardha resident Pratik Jitendra Lokhande approached his bank following threats from the accused, after he had withdrawn ₹40,000 from his own account. A subsequent inquiry found that nearly ₹22 lakh in suspicious transactions had passed through his account within a single month. He filed a complaint on April 30, 2026, leading to a case registered under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act.
Police arrested Tanmay Kishore Bhagat, Sunny Manoj Holani, Dipesh Rajkumar Sevlani, Ankur Subhash Jain, Pankaj alias Panku Rajesh Lalwani and Dipesh Sawaldas Panjwani. Investigators say the accused sourced bank accounts from Wardha, Nagpur and surrounding areas before supplying them to organised cybercrime networks operating elsewhere.
A Familiar Model Behind India’s Biggest Betting Scandal
The platforms named in the Wardha probe, including Mahadev App, Reddy Anna, Fairplay, Win Adda, Lotus 365 and Dubai Exchange, are not obscure operations. Mahadev App alone is at the centre of India’s largest illegal betting investigation, with the CBI having filed eleven fresh chargesheets against 72 individuals, including alleged kingpins Saurabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, who are believed to run the network from abroad. Similar mule-account rackets feeding the same platforms have been dismantled in Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Pune in recent years, each following an almost identical pattern of vendors or intermediaries opening accounts in unsuspecting people’s names before routing crores through them.
Wardha investigators say that whenever a bank account was frozen, the syndicate simply opened new ones using other individuals’ identities and continued operating, a resilience that mirrors exactly what has made the broader Mahadev App network so difficult to shut down nationally despite years of arrests and asset seizures.
A researcher at Algoritha Security said cybercriminals increasingly rely on mule account networks to move funds generated through online betting, money laundering and cyber fraud, typically luring individuals with promises of easy money or employment before misusing their accounts. The researcher cautioned that account holders themselves can face legal consequences if their accounts are found to have facilitated illegal transactions, and urged citizens never to hand over bank accounts, ATM cards, passbooks, SIM cards or internet banking credentials to anyone. Police said the investigation continues, with further arrests expected as they trace the racket’s links to networks operating in other states.
