A young man in his 20s lost ₹25 lakh of his deceased father’s savings after a group of men allegedly promised him investment options in “reputable stocks” that would fetch high returns.

To gain his trust the men included him in a Whatsapp group they had created for their “business”.

The Gariahat resident lodged a complaint based on which police arrested the men who were allegedly in the business of using mule accounts to carry out fraudulent transactions and then transfer the money abroad through cryptocurrency.

Mule accounts are owned by people who are duped by fraudsters into laundering stolen/illegal money via their bank accounts. When such incidents are reported, the “money mule” becomes the target of investigations because of their involvement.

Four of the group members were arrested earlier this month while the remaining seven were arrested between Wednesday and Thursday.

Police said SIM cards and an ATM card from a bank in Dubai have been seized from the arrested men.

“During the probe, it was found that ₹8 lakh was transferred to the Tobin Road branch of a bank. Four persons were tracked down from the details of the account. Further investigations revealed that ₹11.5 lakh was transferred to a current account of the Dhakuria branch of another bank,” said an officer of the cyber police station at Lalbazar.

The account was registered in the name of M/S Noor Textiles and on checking the details of the email ID and the mobile number registered with the bank account the police zeroed in on a Jadavpur resident named Indranil Saha.

“The link of another person named Mohammad Imran Hasan emerged while probing details of the bank account. We found that Hasan was using a mobile number that was registered in the name of Jobin Francis Thomas,” said the officer.

The police said they had arrested 11 members of the group who engaged people to open mule accounts to carry out fraudulent transactions.

A senior officer said they had found evidence that the money that was fraudulently transferred into the mule accounts by cheating people was being transferred abroad.

The police said 59 ATM cards, 29 chequebooks, 10 mobile phones with SIM cards, one POS machine, nine stamps of different shell companies, documents related to the formation of shell companies, an ATM card from Dubai and several SIM cards from Dubai have been seized from the accused.