Cyber crime officials investigate bank staff’s role in rise of frauds

With significant increase in cases of cyber fraudsters using ‘mule bank accounts’, to dupe people, the cyber crime officials are now verifying the complicity of bank officials in important cyber fraud crimes.

Hyderabad: With significant increase in cases of cyber fraudsters using ‘mule bank accounts’, to dupe people, the cyber crime officials are now verifying the complicity of bank officials in important cyber fraud crimes.

In recent cases, the police found that even current bank accounts were opened in different banks in the city and other parts of the country. The bank officials ignored the basic verification while opening the bank accounts and even failed to flag suspicious big transactions.

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The Telangana Police had organised awareness programmes and written to the bank managements about the frauds taking place due to careless in verifying the bank accounts. However, the bank officials are found to be ignoring the advice of the police, hence attracting criminal cases.

“In every big case, we are verifying the complicity of the bank officials and now initiating criminal action against them. Already, two officials of a bank in old city were arrested for their complicity in a big financial fraud,” said an official of Telangana Cyber Security Bureau.

Investigations into the fraud revealed that a set of brokers are facilitating the opening of the bank accounts for the fraudsters using credential of some people in exchange for a commission. “The commission is paid the account holder for facilitating the transfer of money. Also, the bank officials are suspected to being paid some amount for turning a blind eye to the happenings,” said the official.

The State police had written to the Reserve Bank of India highlighting the need to maintain a thorough mechanism to verify the details before opening a bank account. Meetings were held by with the local bank managements in this regard.

“In Telangana, we are holding awareness programmess for bank employees in the State. In other places, we are asking the local police and the RBI to make banks adhere to the guidelines,” the official added.