21 people involved in cyber fraud arrested
Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir police have uncovered a major network of mule bank accounts used by fraudsters to manipulate payments received through cyber swindling and arrested 21 persons involved in the financial crime.
A mule account is a bank account used to facilitate illegal transactions by receiving and transferring funds from unlawful activities or committing other financial crimes. The person who owns the account is called a ‘money mule’ duped by fraudsters into laundering stolen or illegal money via a bank account.
While addressing a press conference here. Srinagar’s SSP Imtiyaz Hussain said that the Cyber Police Station (Kashmir Zone) has, so far this year, identified as many as 7,200 mule bank accounts operating in the Kashmir Valley and parts of the Jammu region of the Union Territory. He said that among the 21 persons arrested, so far, 19 are residents of Srinagar and that four FIRs have been registered during the investigation.
“It is a crime to run a mule bank account and receive and transfer funds through cyber fraud. If anyone has been misled and duped into running a mule account, he or she should immediately get in touch with the police. We will see how best we can help him or her,” the SSP said. He warned the others running mule accounts deliberately to facilitate financial frauds of strict action under law. “There place is in jail…we will not spare them,” he said.
Mr. Hussain said that most of the mule accounts unearthed, so far, were being primarily scouted through social media platforms such as Telegram and Facebook and remotely controlled by fraudsters operating from outside J&K and even abroad. “Once these accounts are set up, they are integrated into illegal payment gateways and used by criminal syndicates to collect deposits from victims on fake investment websites, offshore betting and gambling platforms, and fraudulent stock trading portals, he said, adding that funds received in these mule accounts are immediately layered and diverted to other accounts or converted into cryptocurrency to obscure the money trail.
He said that such accounts typically remain active for a short span-often less than a week—before being flagged due to suspicious transactions. However, within this brief window, transactions worth crores of rupees are executed and funnelled across a chain of accounts, he added.
He further stated that in response to a request by Cyber Police Kashmir, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (i4C), Ministry of Home Affairs, helped in identifying 7,200 mule bank accounts operating from the Kashmir Valley and Jammu parts and created since January 2025.
“This number is expected to be much higher as the investigation is underway,” he said.
