Assam Police receiving 600 cyber fraud cases in one year in the state is just the tip of the ice berg. Apart from indicating that more people have fallen prey to cybercrime gangs, it is also reflective of the poor awareness level among the people about different types of digital fraud. City Police Commissioner Diganta Barah cautioning people against rising cybercrime and explaining various modus operandi is a laudable initiative to raise awareness. He flagged the incidents of a rising number of mule accounts to receive and transfer funds for illegal activities. This calls for banks to take a special measure of cautioning people about the possibility of such a crime while opening a new bank account for any customer and how they can land in trouble if their account kits and details are shared with any other individual. By mule account, police refer to those bank accounts, the owners of which allow suspects to operate the account in lieu of some regular monetary benefits. The modus operandi is that the account is opened with the Aadhaar number and PAN numbers of the account owner, but account details are handed over to cybercriminals to operate the account. Once the account is activated, the bank kits are handed over to the cybercriminals, who start operating with the registered mobile number for illegal transactions. When police detect such illegal transactions, it leads them to the people in whose name the account was opened, and such gullible people are booked for use of their accounts in unlawful activities. The City Police Commissioner said that cybercriminals target illiterate people to trap in this modus operandi after banks have strengthened measures against fake accounts created using fake identities. More emphasis being laid on the digital banking system, even for opening bank accounts, and reducing brick-and-mortar branches has given rise to new challenges of verification of credentials of customers. Now customers are given the opportunity to open savings bank accounts by uploading documents online without the need for visiting the bank branch. If the holder of the account completes the video Know Your Customer process using a mobile number registered in the account holder’s name, which is later handed over to the cybercriminals, then in the online system banks will not be able to detect who is operating the account. However, during physical transactions in a branch bank, staff can verify if the account holder is genuine through verification of signature and ask questions if they have any doubts over the nature of transactions. Even then, banks can detect such accounts on suspicion when they come across a sudden high-value transaction of receiving or transferring money that does not reflect their regular transaction volume and report it to the police. As the digital banking system is the need of the hour to facilitate 24x7 banking to people where they are for faster economic progress of the country, the solution lies not in reverting bank to brick and mortar branch banking but raising awareness of the customers. Unfortunately, the awareness drive carried out so far has not been able to cover all sections of bank customers. Account holders with low levels of financial and digital literacy and poor awareness of cybercrimes often remain outside the reach of the awareness drive and therefore become targets of mule transactions. Police and bank authorities, while collaborating to raise awareness on cybercrimes and how bank customers should stay protected, need to prioritise this section of bank customers. Spreading information on punitive measures against mule account holders will have deterrent action against becoming associates of such accounts. The police suspect that there could be more victims of cybercrime who have not approached the police or lodged a complaint with the cybercrime investigation cell. Instead of a generic campaign against cybercrime, wider dissemination of modus operandi of various types of cybercrimes through traditional and new media channels frequently can help raise the awareness level. Even after police, banks, and other authorities publicised about different types of cybercrimes and released a list of dos and don’ts to stay protected against such crimes, the cybercriminal gangs have managed to dupe many more people with the same modus operandi. This implies that cybercriminals have observed that awareness drives have not reached a large section of people who have become new users of digital media and have come under the banking and other financial system network. As the number of digital users has increased exponentially, it creates tougher challenges for police and other law-enforcing agencies to curb cybercrimes with limited human resources. Use of artificial intelligence can be effective but requires massive funding for research, trained professionals, and upgrading technology, and there it will take some time to equip law-enforcing agencies with all these. Until such a transition happens, the pragmatic solution to the problem is to make people the force multiplier in the war against cybercriminals.