Hyderabad: Mule accounts are the biggest challenge to the law enforcement and bank officials dealing with the growing threat of cyber crime, said cyber crime experts. Industry experts see Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) as the emerging technologies that will play a major role in identifying such accounts.
Despite the Telangana Cyber Security Bureau (TGCSB) being able to recover Rs 183 crore in 2024 which would have otherwise been lost, bankers claim that there is nothing to identify money mules used by cyber criminals until they do a transaction.
A panel discussion on the topic “Mule hunters- tech solutions for money mules” was held on the concluding day of the “Shield 2025 conclave” held at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC) on Wednesday, February 19, where the issue was discussed by experts in detail.
The conclave was jointly organised by the Telangana Cyber Crime Bureau (TGCSB) and Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC).
Nilesh Deshpande, head of financial crime prevention group, ICICI, said that at a time when customers were deciding the payments and their payment methods, it has become increasing difficult to do a background check on the accounts to identify potential mule accounts.
He said that the process involved in depositing money in mule accounts, then fragmenting the amount in various other accounts, consolidation of the money, and then finally the amount being converted into crypto currency at the final layer of the cyber fraud involving an unidentified criminal is too complex and happens within no time before the money is gone.
“In 2024, Rs 22,812 crore has been lost in cyber crime in India, and across the globe it was Rs 75,000 crore. 0.7% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) being involved in mule transactions which is reported was just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
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The ICICI representative said that even while doing e-KYC and video KYC of their accounts, cyber criminals have been using IP spoofing apps to make it look like they were in a particular city, though they may be as far as the north eastern states.
He, however, said that banks putting the customer service as paramount, and banks not ready to spend more on innovative technologies to identify such mule accounts because of the higher costs involved with no return on investment, were some of the banking side of concerns.
Rajesh Bansal, CEO of the Reserve Bank Of India Hyderabad said that out of 10 banks involved in an RBI’s study, it was found that 8 were still using conventional rule-based system to identify such accounts, which were showing mostly ‘false positives.’ “With mulehunter.ai deployed in 3-5 banks presently, such issues could be addressed in an hour,” he observed.
The RBI CEO said that in three years from now, the discussion on mule accounts will no longer be needed, as steps will be taken to address cyber crime associated with such accounts.
Some numbers
- There has been 35% increase in mule account frauds in the last 6 months.
- There were 1,20,869 cyber crime victims in Telangana in 2024.
- Global cyber crime amount to reach USD 10.5 trillion by 2025.
- There have been losses amounting to USD 113.3 billion due to cyber frauds.
- In 2024, there have been 208 billion digital transactions in India, which is 46% more than in 2023.
- The National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCERT) and the 1930 cybercrime helpline have helped identify over 6,000 victims of online frauds.
