Kasaragod: He is 49 but claims he doesn't look a day over 30. He dropped out of Class IX but has mastered 11 languages, travelling across India trading in cashew nuts, pepper, and arecanuts. Mehboob (name changed), the plantation crop trader from Kasaragod, once saw high-value imports flowing through ports in Thoothukudi, Mangaluru, and Chennai.

However, the seasoned trader, with 16 years behind him, had recently fallen on hard times. That was when his high-transaction current account drew the attention of a shadowy network of 'smurfs', who saw in it the perfect cover to move illicit money, breaking vast amounts into smaller deposits and transactions, a laundering trick known as smurfing.

In six days, Mehboob saw ₹6.26 crore pass through his account. Forty-eight businesses, with legitimate-sounding names and interests, made the deposits. But he could not find them on the internet. The going was smooth until he decided to fight back, and the smurfs quickly turned the tables on him, making him a suspect wanted by at least five police stations, from Bihar to Bengaluru, and Kolkata to Kerala.

The Indore proposal
Sometime in mid-August, Mehboob was contacted by a stock trader from Indore in Madhya Pradesh, asking if he would be interested in renting out his current account with a private sector bank in Kasaragod. The proposition was too tempting.

The stock trader, who went by the name Alok, promised Mehboob ₹50,000 a day as rent for his account, claiming it would see deposits of around ₹2 lakh daily. As a bonus, he was promised 50 per cent of any surplus left in the account after the transactions; the other half would go to Alok. But there was a rider: Mehboob would have to travel to Indore and stay in a lodge they booked for him during the time the account was being used. They wanted him nearby so he couldn’t siphon off funds using cheques or other means.

"I was struggling with my business and thought I would make some money, so I agreed," said the father of three daughters and a son. In Indore, he handed over to Alok everything linked to the bank account, the debit card, the SIM card, the internet banking credentials, and the email ID. "I didn’t open a new account because they specifically wanted my existing one. The only complication was that it was in my wife's name, since I ran the business through her," he said.

Lakhs overnight
On the very first day, he saw ₹87 lakh in his account. By evening, he expected his promised ₹50,000 rent. But Alok stopped answering his calls. "They thought I couldn't see the money, but I kept getting alerts on my iPhone," he said. The next day, breakfast arrived at his lodge as usual, but there was no sign of Alok or the rent. "When I confronted the man who delivered food to me, he said he was just an employee of the 'company'," Mehboob said. He kept calling Alok as the money kept trickling into his account. On the fourth day, after hundreds of unanswered calls, Alok showed up and handed over ₹30,000, far short of the ₹1.5 lakh he expected for three days.

Over six days in Indore, ₹6.26 crore flowed into his account, from businesses and entities with legitimate-sounding names. But the company he was engaging with remained elusive, "behind laptops", as he put it. "I learned Alok was only a mediator," he said.

Turning the tables
Feeling cheated, the Kasaragod trader decided to outsmart the 'company' and blocked the SIM tied to his bank account. Without OTP, all further outflow of funds was halted. "The account then had ₹40 lakh. I also shifted to another lodge in Indore to be safe," he said. When Alok realised this, his behaviour flipped. "The same man who ignored me for days began calling me nonstop," Mehboob said.

Mehboom shifted the conversation to WhatsApp messages and kept engaging with Alok till 2.30 am. While Alok tried to persuade him to unblock the SIM, Mehboob booked an Uber in the dead of the night, rode to Bhopal, and caught a morning flight back to Mangaluru.

Back home, he got a replacement SIM for the same number and, after 24 hours, transferred ₹20 lakh into his wife's savings account; both the savings and current accounts shared the same user ID. Alok kept pressing. At one point, he sent the account number of a travel agent, demanding the ₹20 lakh as his "share". Mehboob refused flatly. "I told him I will never give you money. You cheated me."

'There's some good news'
When Alok realised Mehboob was becoming a tough nut to crack, he resorted to threats. On the fourth day after Mehboob returned home, Alok told him he would be in trouble if the money was not sent back. "I ignored him." After 10 minutes, Alok called again and said, "There is some good news."

"I asked what it was. He said my account would be frozen now," said Mehboob. Within 30 seconds of the call ending, Mehboob received an SMS from his bank confirming that both his current and savings accounts had been frozen. "I wonder how he did that so fast," he said. "First, he came to me asking for my bank account. Now he could freeze my account within minutes."

The nightmare escalated. By night, SMS alerts arrived from five different police stations, Cherupuzha (Kannur), Palarivattom (Ernakulam), Kolkata, Bengaluru, and one in Bihar, all linking his account to cybercrimes. "That was the first time I got scared," he admitted.

No FIRs, only complaints
Of all the stations, only Cherupuzha followed through. "Officers there kept calling me, urging me to drop in at the station and settle the complaint," he said. But when he asked whether an FIR had been registered, they said there wasn't one.

When Onmanorama contacted Cherupuzha police, the Station House Officer said there was a complaint involving ₹3.22 lakh that had been filed on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (1930). "The complainant is from Cherupuzha station limit," the officer said. He added that the plantation crop trader's account was linked to many cyber complaints and he had moved the High Court to get the freeze lifted. He may come to the station after that, said the officer. But he did not explain why an FIR was not registered.

Deductions go on
Mehboob said he had received no calls from police in the past 10 days. "I'm penniless," he said. He added that despite the debit freeze on his bank accounts, the bank deducted ₹2 lakh towards a scheme he joined this year to secure the future of one of his daughters with mental disabilities. Then the GST Department deducted another ₹3 lakh.

According to the cyber police, there is a lien amount of ₹57 lakh against his accounts, money he cannot touch even if the freeze is lifted. But ₹57 lakh is only a fraction of the money that passed through his account.

"I agree, I made a mistake by renting out my account. But I cannot be punished for crimes I didn’t commit. There's big money moving through banks," he said. He believes the crores routed through his account were converted into USDT cryptocurrency and spirited out of India. "All this, I understood only after my Indore trip," the trader said.