Bhubaneswar: The police today busted an interstate cyber fraud racket operating from Odisha’s Rourkela city and arrested seven accused persons, including a banker, in this connection.

A joint team of Raghunathpali police, Plant Site police, Brahmani Tarang police and Sector 7, led by Rourkela Additional SP, busted the racket. The arrested accused have been identified as Palak Ghosh, Aryan Mahanandia, A. Khan, Vikram Singh, T. Hussain, Akash Sharma and Bipin Sha. All the accused are the residents of Rourkela and its nearby areas, police said.

The cops have seized as many as 80 bank passbooks, 50 debit cards, 10 Aadhaar cards, 15 cheque books, four laptops, 25 mobile phones and several other documents from the accused.

The fraudsters duped several individuals of Rs 2 crore 

According to police, the accused had opened several bank accounts by submitting the identity proofs of some other persons or fake documents. They later lent out those accounts to cybercriminals in several states by charging anything between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, said the police.

The cybercriminals have committed as many as 200 cases of fraud across the country by using those mule accounts. Preliminary investigation has found that the fraudsters duped several individuals in different states of around Rs 2 crore.

“So far, we have arrested seven persons, including an employee of the Union Bank. We suspect the involvement of some other employees of the bank in the illegal act,” said Rourkela SP Nitesh Wadhwani.