Cyberfraud on rise: Fraudsters shift focus towards small business accounts; exploit PANs and fake Udhyam certificates
Financial fraudsters are increasingly shifting their operations toward small business and current accounts, using them to move large amounts of illegal funds, executives at fraud-detection startups said.
In the past, scammers generally hijacked retail and Jan Dhan accounts and converted them into mule accounts . However, now they are turning to business accounts for the same purpose. “We have seen such cases where mules are getting access to business PANs (permanent account numbers) easily and creating fake Udhyam certificates and using those to open current accounts under fake documents,” said Ranjan Reddy, founder of Bureau, a fraud and risk decisioning startup, as quoted by ET.
Udhyam certificates for small enterprises can be obtained online, increasing the scope for misuse.
According to Rajit Bhattacharya, cofounder of identity-verification startup Datasutram, banks are encountering a rising number of current accounts that have been taken over and used as mule accounts. As savings accounts face tighter scrutiny with advanced monitoring tools, fraudsters are actively searching for alternative routes to shift suspicious funds, he said.
In the past, scammers generally hijacked retail and Jan Dhan accounts and converted them into mule accounts . However, now they are turning to business accounts for the same purpose. “We have seen such cases where mules are getting access to business PANs (permanent account numbers) easily and creating fake Udhyam certificates and using those to open current accounts under fake documents,” said Ranjan Reddy, founder of Bureau, a fraud and risk decisioning startup, as quoted by ET.
Udhyam certificates for small enterprises can be obtained online, increasing the scope for misuse.
According to Rajit Bhattacharya, cofounder of identity-verification startup Datasutram, banks are encountering a rising number of current accounts that have been taken over and used as mule accounts. As savings accounts face tighter scrutiny with advanced monitoring tools, fraudsters are actively searching for alternative routes to shift suspicious funds, he said.
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