Bhubaneswar, Jan 17: Odisha Special Task Force (STF) has arrested one more member of the inter-state racket involved in the mule bank account scam from West Bengal, an STF official said on Wednesday.

The accused fraudster identified as Sourav Maity (30) is a resident of Rampura in West Medinapurr district of West Bengal. Maity was later produced before a local court and brought to Bhubaneswar on a four-day transit remand. He will be produced before the SDJM court here.

STF had earlier arrested four other members of the gang identified as Sk Jamiruddin of West Medinipur district and Samim Islam of Murshidabad district in West Bengal, Sk Hapizul and Sk Jahangir of Balasore district of Odisha.

STF sources said the racket operates mainly in the tri-junction area of Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal especially in the districts of Balasore, Mayurbhanj, East Midnapore, West Midnapore, East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum and Saraikela areas.

Around 10 to 15 agents hired by the prime accused Sk Jamiruddin with the payment of Rs 15,000 each per month used to visit the interior areas of the above districts and collect important documents for opening of mule bank accounts.

The agents lure poor tribals and villagers in opening mule bank accounts by paying them Rs 2000 per account. The mobile numbers linked with bank accounts are provided by other gang members.

Jamiruddin and others would later share the above mule bank accounts and fake SIM cards with Islam who sold them to various Cyber, cyber-financial, sextortion scammers and other criminals based at Kolkata and other parts of India.

“They also use social media platforms like secret WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, Telegram channels to sell the mule bank accounts. They sell mule bank accounts at the rate of Rs 15,000 to 20,000 per account. So far, they have sold around 5000 mule bank accounts at different platforms,” said the STF official.

The STF also ascertained that the scammers frequently change the bank accounts which they abandon once it reaches a transaction limit of Rs one lakh.

(IANS)

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