Alwar cyber racket busted: Axis Bank staff among 6 held for selling mule accounts worth Rs 500 crore

Police seize 33 phones, 34 SIMs and Rs 2.5 lakh cash as probe reveals fraudsters laundered scam money through fake current accounts.

Rajasthan Police have cracked open a cyber fraud racket in Alwar that operated by selling 'mule accounts' to cybercriminals, helping them launder scam money across India. According to a report by PTI, six people, including four employees of Axis Bank, were arrested on Sunday, taking the total arrests in the case to 16, Superintendent of Police (Alwar) Sudheer Choudhary said.

What investigators found

During raids, police seized:

26 ATM cards
33 mobile phones
34 SIM cards
Rs 2.5 lakh in cash
Cheque books, passbooks and two cars

According to the report by PTI citing police, the racket sold hundreds of current and corporate accounts to fraudsters through WhatsApp and Telegram groups. The accounts, opened with forged documents, were later linked to new phone numbers and APK files, giving cybercriminals direct access to internet banking.

These accounts were used to launder proceeds from online betting, gaming scams and crypto transactions, authorities said.

The masterminds and Axis Bank link

Those arrested include:

Varun Patwa (40), a Udaipur native now living in Gurugram
Satish Kumar Jat (35) of Hisar, Haryana

The Axis Bank employees arrested were identified as:

Sahil Agarwal (33)
Gulshan Punjabi (33)
Asu Sharma (23)
Anchal Jat (24)

Police allege they were responsible for opening fake current accounts with forged papers and handing them over to middlemen, who in turn sold them to cybercriminals.

The scale of the racket

Investigators told PTI that the operation was not a small-time fraud.

Over Rs 500 crore was routed through these mule accounts. More than 4,000 complaints linked to these accounts are registered on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP). Frauds worth over Rs 100 crore have been directly traced back to the racket so far

What are mule accounts and why do they matter in cybercrime

In the world of cyber fraud, 'mule accounts' are the most prized asset. These accounts act as temporary pipelines for moving stolen money, making it nearly impossible to trace the original fraudster. With bank insiders allegedly helping create them, fraudsters had a ready-made ecosystem to run scams at scale.