Medical dropout among three held for links with international cyber criminals, managing hundreds of mule accounts

The probe into the case revealed that some amount had been sent to the bank account of a man from Wagholi in Pune who works for a delivery service. The questioning of this person revealed that his account was opened at the behest of some people. These other suspects had in their possession the entire kit of his bank account. Following some technical leads, the investigation team found out that the suspects were in Lonavala area.

After a combing operation conducted across dozens of bungalows and villas in Lonavala, the team arrested last week three suspects identified as Avinash Baklikar alias Com King (26), a resident of Latur and a final year medical dropout, Adab Shaikh alias Maddy (26), a resident of Ghaziabad and a commerce graduate working for online marketing firm and Satish More (35), a resident of Ratnagiri working as a sales executive for a private sector bank.

“Probe has revealed Baklikar came in contact with international cyber criminals through his friend, who has been arrested in the past. We believe that Baklikar played a major role in handling largescale cyber crime operations that managed a web of hundreds of mule accounts in India and funnelled money to cyber criminals in Nepal and China by converting it into tether cryptocurrency. Baklikar has also attended some meetings of cyber criminals that were held at Kathmandu. They operated from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Pune. It seems that they ran their operations using particular aliases given to them by the international cyber criminals. The arrests will lead to further crucial information about bigger players in the racket,” said an officer who is part of the probe.

The probe was led by DCP, Crime, Sandeep Doiphone and ACP Vishal Hire and the investigation team comprises Inspector Ravikiran Nale, Assistant Inspector Praveen Swami and sub inspectors Sagar Poman, Vaibhav Patil, Prakash Katkade and Vidya Patil.

Cops bust betting racket 

In a separate action, Pimpri Chinchwad police conducted a raid at a house in Punawale area and arrested 10 persons who were running an illegal betting racket through a particular online betting application. Probe has revealed that the suspects were taking money from people and placing the bets through online betting applications.