HT Digital
GUWAHATI, Feb 28: Five individuals have been arrested by Agartala police on suspicion of white washing black money through fake financial transactions. The arrests followed the launch of an investigation into suspicious online transactions, a police official confirmed on February 28.
The scam was exposed when a person visited a travel agent in the Math Chowmuhani locality on Thursday and made an online booking of Rs 10,000 for a ticket to Kashmir. But after a couple of hours, the same individual visited the agency again, cancelled the ticket, and received a refund against the money he paid.
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While this appeared to be a typical transaction initially, it later became suspicious when the owner of the travel agency got an unexpected phone call from the Tamil Nadu police. Tamil Nadu authorities informed the owner of the travel agency that his bank account had been seized because illegal money transactions linked to it were reported. Realizing that he had unknowingly been introduced to a fraud, the owner immediately lodged a complaint at the East Agartala police station against the person who had bought and later canceled the ticket.
Acting quickly, the police registered a case and chased the suspect. The man confessed to his involvement in the scam while being interrogated, and four others involved in the scam were apprehended. East Agartala police station’s officer-in-charge Rana Chatterjee stated that the police confiscated several ATM cards and bank passbooks from the accused.
The group operated by transferring online payments to other bank accounts and then withdrawing the funds online, literally laundering black money. Chatterjee further revealed that the group was telling people to open multiple bank accounts and rent out their ATM cards for a monthly fee of between Rs 2,500 and Rs 3,000. The rented ATM cards and bank accounts were then used for online fraud and other illegal financial operations.
