‘Divya’ WhatsApp message leads police to BJP leader in Rs 21 crore crypto fraud case

Bhopal: A WhatsApp message beginning with the words, “Hello, this is Divya speaking”, has helped investigators unravel what police describe as Madhya Pradesh’s biggest cyber fraud case, leading to the arrest of a BJP zila panchayat member accused of helping launder the proceeds.

Madhya Pradesh cyber police arrested Jagdish Kumar Malviya, a BJP leader and district panchayat member from Shajapur, after tracing Rs 50 lakh of the money allegedly defrauded from a 70-year-old chartered accountant to his bank account.

Police allege that Malviya knowingly allowed proceeds of cyber fraud to be routed through the bank account of an organisation where he served as president, in return for a 2 per cent commission. Investigators believe this made him a key link in an interstate network involved in laundering money through so-called mule accounts.

The case came to light after Ashok Vijayvargiya, a chartered accountant from Gwalior, allegedly lost more than Rs 21 crore in a cryptocurrency investment scam. The fraudsters reportedly posed as investment advisers and lured him into a fake USDT trading platform.

According to investigators, the fraud began in December 2025 when Vijayvargiya received a WhatsApp message from a woman identifying herself as “Divya”. She allegedly promised unusually high returns through cryptocurrency investments and gradually gained his confidence.

The fraudsters initially allowed Vijayvargiya to withdraw a small amount, apparently to make the investment platform appear legitimate. He was later shown a fake trading account indicating that his investment had grown to more than Rs 33 crore.

When he attempted to withdraw the supposed profits, however, the fraudsters allegedly demanded additional payments in the name of income tax, risk margins and other fabricated charges.

By the time Vijayvargiya realised the profits existed only on the fake platform, he had transferred more than Rs 21 crore in 106 transactions to 76 different bank accounts.

During the investigation, cyber police reconstructed the money trail and found that nearly Rs 77 lakh had reached accounts linked to Malviya in the first layer of transactions. Of this, around Rs 50 lakh has been directly linked to the fraud under investigation, police said.

Investigators alleged that Malviya had access to the bank account and internet banking credentials of the organisation where he was president. During questioning, he reportedly admitted to allowing fraud proceeds to pass through the account in exchange for a 2 per cent commission.

Police have also detected suspicious transactions worth more than Rs 2.5 crore in accounts linked to Malviya, raising suspicion that they may have been repeatedly used to route money generated through cyber frauds.

According to the police, Malviya appeared to be living an extravagant lifestyle funded by suspicious financial transactions. Investigators said he had travelled to Bangkok with associates in July, even as they were tracing the cryptocurrency fraud.

Malviya was produced before a court and remanded in police custody. During interrogation, he reportedly provided information about an interstate network allegedly operating mule accounts — bank accounts used to receive and quickly transfer illicit funds before they can be frozen.

Money moved through 15 layers

The scale of the alleged laundering network has complicated the investigation. Police said the Rs 21.06 crore defrauded from the victim was not kept in a small number of accounts but fragmented across hundreds of transactions.

Investigators have so far identified 76 first-layer bank accounts into which the victim's money was transferred. The funds were subsequently moved through as many as 15 layers of transactions.

More than 20,000 bank accounts and digital transactions have been identified as part of the investigation, police said.

Nearly 35 per cent of the money was allegedly routed through accounts in southern India before being dispersed across several states, including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

Police have so far managed to freeze around Rs 2 crore. The remaining money was allegedly withdrawn, converted into cryptocurrency or dispersed through digital payment channels.

Investigators suspect the funds were deliberately split into numerous transactions of varying amounts so that they would not remain in any one account long enough to be detected and frozen.

Influential people allegedly tried to intervene

Sources said tracing and arresting Malviya was not straightforward. Investigators claimed that after he was detained, some influential individuals contacted officials seeking information about the case and allegedly attempted to intervene.

However, sources said they withdrew after being informed about the scale of the investigation, which police believe could be Madhya Pradesh's largest cyber fraud case.

Police officer Sanjeev Nayan Sharma said the investigation is now focused on identifying the masterminds behind the fake cryptocurrency platform.

Investigators are also tracing IP addresses, analysing WhatsApp communications — including those involving a number with a US country code — and attempting to identify the interstate syndicate controlling the network of mule accounts.

Police suspect that several account holders may have acted merely as commission-based money mules, while the main operators remain concealed behind multiple layers of digital and financial transactions.