Bankura police on Wednesday arrested six youths who allegedly opened fictitious e-wallets to help conmen electronically route the money obtained from various bank accounts by fraud.

Police said they busted the racket being run from Bankura with the help of distributors of SIM card providers of a mobile service provider.

Over 8,000 mobile SIM cards, which were registered with fake identity proofs have been seized.

“We got a tip-off that a person was buying SIM cards in bulk and that set us investigating. The trail led us to the kingpin of the racket, Abhishek Mondal,” a policeman said.

The police suspect this racket has roots across the country. Abhishek apart, others arrested were his brother Abhijit, who helped him sell fictitious e-wallets to fraudsters, Ajit Mondal and Rajaram Biswas, who were the distributors of two mobile service providers, Ramprasad Digar, who collected fake ID proofs, and Rohit Mondal, an associate of the gang. All are aged between 21 and 30 years.

Explaining the modus operandi, a senior police officer of Bankura’s cyber crime cell said: “Their prime job was to divert money acquired through fraud to various e-wallets. They first purchased and activated a SIM card against a fictitious name. Then they opened an e-wallet with that number and shared it with fraudsters who directly credited the cash into the e-wallet. Immediately, the cash was transferred to a bank account using the e-wallet registered against a mobile number.”

The officer added: “To mislead cops, the fraudsters immediately ported the number to another service provider. As the e-wallets are opened with forged documents and photographs, it made tracking more difficult.”

Police have recovered from the youths 8,282 SIM cards, seven different bank accounts, 110 forged identity-proof documents, many computers, smartphones and other gadgets used in running the racket.

“It is a modern crime involving e-wallets and e-accounts. Those that we have arrested today (Wednesday) are just the tip of the iceberg as they were opening e-wallets with forged documents to help bank frauds across the country. We have found several e-wallets opened by them and some are being used internationally,” said Dhritiman Sarkar, the SP in Bankura.

“We need to get several details from the arrested persons to find out all the people involved in the racket using e-wallets to commit frauds. According to primary information we think that the gang had defrauded people to the tune of at least Rs 50 lakh by using e-wallets,” he said.

The arrested youths were produced at Bankura court on Wednesday and sent to police custody for seven days.