8 cyber crooks held for investment fraud racket, police say Rs 4 crore routed via mule accounts
New Delhi (PTI): The Delhi Police has busted an inter-state investment fraud racket operated by a handler based in Cambodia, an official said on Sunday.
Police have arrested eight people following raids conducted across Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi and claimed to have uncovered Rs 4 crore which was routed into mule accounts within just 14 days, he said.
The arrests were made after a 42-year-old woman from Vasant Kunj was cheated of Rs 15.58 lakh on the pretext of high-return stock market investments, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Amit Goel said.
"WhatsApp numbers used to contact victims were being operated from Cambodia, while Indian associates facilitated the opening and operation of mule accounts on a commission basis," the DCP said.
Those arrested have been identified as Vanapatla Sunil Kumar (43), Sakinala Shankar (61), Manoj Yadav (38), Sandeep Singh (30), Aditya Pratap Singh (23), Rahul (30), Sheru (38) and Sompal (34).
"We have recovered 10 high-end mobile phones and 13 SIM cards from the accused, which were allegedly used to operate multiple mule bank accounts, transfer cheated money and communicate with handlers abroad," the DCP said.
According to police, an e-FIR was registered on November 7, last year, after the complainant reported being lured through WhatsApp messages offering expert guidance in stock trading with assured returns.
"She was persuaded to transfer Rs 15.58 lakh to various accounts controlled by the fraudsters. A team traced the money trail using technical surveillance and digital forensics. Investigators identified Sunil Kumar, a resident of Telangana, as a key supplier of mule bank accounts.
"He allegedly opened a fake firm in Keesara and arranged a current account in a private bank for routing cyber fraud proceeds," the official added.
During interrogation, Kumar disclosed the involvement of Sakinala Shankar and Manoj Yadav. Subsequent raids led to the arrest of Yadav from Sant Kabir Nagar, followed by Sandeep Singh from Banaras, who managed account operations in Lucknow, police said.
Further surveillance resulted in the arrest of Aditya Pratap Singh from Kota in Rajasthan. Singh allegedly arranged mule accounts across India and shared their access with foreign handlers through social media.
The cheated funds were then layered through multiple Indian bank accounts, including those operated by Sompal and Rahul, to obscure the money trail before being supplied to handlers abroad, said the officer.
Sompal, an MBA graduate who earlier ran a software company, allegedly provided his corporate account for bulk transactions after his business became non-operational.
Police said 51 cybercrime complaints were linked to his account alone, while a total of 63 complaints were found connected to the network.
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Trump loyalist Pam Bondi out as attorney general
Washington (AP): US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general, ending the contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department's culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees and moved aggressively to investigate the Republican president's perceived enemies.
The departure followed months of scrutiny over the Justice Department's handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation and failed efforts to meet Trump's unwavering demands for criminal cases against his adversaries. As Trump's own frustrations mounted, he began privately discussing firing Bondi, people familiar with the matter say.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement. He added, “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”
Trump named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of his former personal lawyers, as the acting attorney general. Three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Thursday that he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick.
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In her own statement, Bondi called the job “the honor of a lifetime” and said she would be working over the next month to transition the position to Blanche.
Bondi came into office 14 months ago pledging that she would not play politics with the Justice Department. But she quickly set out to do Trump's bidding, heaping lavish praise at congressional hearings and White House events, firing prosecutors deemed insufficiently loyal to the president and opening investigations into his political foes. The intense turmoil contributed to the resignations of hundreds of employees, with the norm-breaking actions stirring concern that he department was being wielded as a tool to advance Trump's personal and political interests.
“Pam Bondi oversaw an unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department that brought our nation's rule of law to its knees,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.
Bondi rejected accusations that she politicised the Justice Department and said her mission was to restore the institution's credibility after overreach by President Joe Biden's Democratic administration, which included two federal criminal cases against Trump. Bondi's defenders have said she worked to refocus the department to better tackle illegal immigration and violent crime and brought much-needed change to an agency they believe unfairly targeted conservatives.
Embracing, supporting and protecting the president
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Bondi's public embrace of the president, however, marked a sharp departure from her predecessors, who generally took pains to maintain an arm's-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions. Bondi postured herself as Trump's chief supporter and protector, praising and defending him in congressional hearings and placing a banner with his face on the exterior of Justice Department headquarters.
She called for an end to the “weaponisation” of law enforcement she said occurred under the Biden administration, even though Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who produced two cases against Trump, have said they followed the facts, the evidence and the law in their decision-making. Bondi's critics, meanwhile, said she was the one who had politicised the agency to do the president's bidding.
“You've turned the People's Department of Justice into Trump's instrument of revenge,” Rep Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary committee, said at a February hearing.
Bondi delivered a combative performance but few substantive answers at that hearing as she angrily insulted her Democratic questioners with name-calling, praised Trump over the performance of the stock market — “The Dow is up over 50,000 right now” —- and openly aligned herself as in sync with a president whom she painted as a victim of past impeachments and investigations.
Even Republicans began to challenge her, with the Republican-led House Oversight Committee last month issuing a subpoena to her to appear for a closed-door interview about the Epstein files.
Under Bondi's leadership, the department opened investigations into a string of Trump foes, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan. The high-profile prosecutions of Comey and James were short-lived as they were quickly thrown out by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed.
Trump repeatedly praised and defended Bondi publicly but also showed flashes of impatience with his attorney general's efforts to meet his demands to prosecute his rivals. In one extraordinary social media post last year, Trump called on Bondi to move quickly to prosecute his foes, including James and Comey, telling her, “We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility.”
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Bondi oversaw the exodus of thousands of career employees — both through firings and voluntary departures — including lawyers who prosecuted violent attacks on police at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021; environmental, civil rights and ethics enforcers; counterterrorism prosecutors; and others.
Fumbling the Epstein files
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She struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case, which has long fascinated conspiracy theorists. She herself had fed the conspiracy theory machine with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that Epstein's “client list” was sitting on her desk for review. The department later acknowledged that no such document exists.
Bondi was ridiculed over a move to hand out binders of Epstein files to conservative influencers at the White House, only for it to be later revealed that the documents included no new revelations. And despite promises that more files were going to become public, the Justice Department in July said no more would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force the agency to do so.
The Epstein files fumbles led to a stunning public criticism from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, a close friend of Bondi's, who told Vanity Fair that the attorney general “completely whiffed.” The Justice Department's release of millions of pages of Epstein files did little to tamp down criticism, prompting a House committee with the support of five Republicans to subpoena Bondi to answer questions under oath.
Bondi, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, was his second choice to lead the Justice Department, picked for the role after former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his name from consideration amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations.
