#FactCheck - Viral Video Claiming Attack on Burj Khalifa is AI-Generated

In Delhi there is a bank branch where a lot of money was stolen from people over the country. This bank branch is where all the money disappeared. The people who did this did not wear masks. Break in at midnight. They just used a passbook a rubber stamp and a form that nobody checked carefully. This is the truth that the people who investigate cybercrime keep finding. The way that cybercriminals get away with the money is not by using a computer it is by using a bank account. The police in Delhi who investigate cybercrime have found that a lot of accounts were opened at bank branches. These accounts were opened using identity documents that were borrowed bought or stolen. Then these accounts were rented out to groups of criminals. One bank branch keeps coming up in complaints. This is not bad luck it is a sign of a bigger problem with how banks check who is opening an account.

These fake accounts, which are called " accounts" are controlled by criminal groups, not the people whose names are on the accounts. These accounts are a part of the cybercrime problem in India. The mistakes that bank branches make which allow these accounts to be opened raise a lot of questions. These questions are about how banks check who is opening an account how they prevent money laundering and how they work with groups to stop cybercrime. The bank accounts are the way that cybercriminals in India get away with the money they steal from people. The cybercrime investigators keep finding bank accounts like the ones at the bank branch, in Delhi, where the money was stolen.

The Anatomy of a Mule Account Network

The pattern is now familiar to investigators. A fraud complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal traces a victim's stolen money to a beneficiary account. When police pull the account-opening file, the person named on the KYC documents often denies ever visiting the branch or signing the forms; signature verification frequently shows a mismatch. In one recent Delhi case, a cooperative bank's deputy manager was arrested after a single account he had helped open surfaced in 159 separate cyber fraud complaints from across the country, with transactions worth nearly Rs 68 crore routed through it before detection. Similar investigations have uncovered supply gangs that procure dozens of accounts at a time using POS machines, stacks of ATM cards, and cheque books belonging to different people and rent them out to fraudsters as ready-made conduits for stolen money.

What makes a single branch or a small cluster of accounts significant is what it reveals about entry-point failure. Investigators do not describe these as sophisticated hacking operations; they describe them as verification failures as are accounts opened without the mandatory in-person checks, video KYC, or document authentication that RBI rules require. When 96, or 700, or 8.5 lakh mule accounts are traced back through a handful of branches and intermediaries, the story is not really about the fraudsters at the far end of the chain. It is about the choke point where honest oversight should have stopped the account from ever existing.

Where the KYC Framework Is Breaking Down

The RBI's Know Your Customer Master Direction requires banks to establish customer identity, verify a genuine business relationship, and apply risk-based due diligence before allowing an account to operate. In practice, investigators have repeatedly found accounts opened through complicit or negligent bank staff, business correspondents, and third-party agents who bypass these checks entirely. Analysts note that mule accounts systematically exploit gaps in customer onboarding, KYC verification, transaction monitoring, and dormant-account surveillance, with criminals using forged or stolen identity documents and layering funds across multiple accounts to escape detection. Economically vulnerable individuals who are daily-wage workers, students, the unemployed are frequently paid a small commission to hand over their documents or existing accounts, often without understanding that they could face criminal liability for transactions they never authorised.

This is compounded by a financial-inclusion paradox that regulators themselves acknowledge: India has expanded banking access faster than it has expanded financial and digital literacy, leaving a population that is easy to recruit knowingly or unknowingly  into mule networks. The result is a KYC regime that looks robust on paper but is only as strong as its weakest branch-level implementation, and weak implementation has proved trivially easy for organised networks to locate and exploit at scale.

The Regulatory and Institutional Response

RBI: From Static Compliance to Active Detection

The Reserve Bank of India has moved beyond periodic KYC audits toward technology-driven detection. It has directed banks to tighten onboarding controls, strengthen transaction monitoring, and report suspicious activity more proactively, and it has proposed additional safeguards, including limits on aggregate credits into accounts where a satisfactory business relationship has not yet been established. Its most significant intervention is MuleHunter.ai, an AI and machine-learning system built to flag suspected mule accounts from transaction-behaviour patterns rather than static KYC data alone; the platform is already operational across roughly two dozen banks and is being expanded. The RBI Innovation Hub has also begun working directly with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to share fraud-risk intelligence and coordinate detection in near real time.

FIU-IND and the PMLA Framework

The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) is the backbone of India's AML architecture. It mandates KYC verification, Customer Due Diligence, record maintenance, and timely reporting of suspicious transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit–India (FIU-IND). Banks are required to file Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) and Cash Transaction Reports with FIU-IND, which in turn analyses financial intelligence and shares it with law enforcement and regulators. On paper, this creates a feedback loop between banks, the RBI, and enforcement agencies; in practice, the sheer volume of mule-linked transactions are hundreds of thousands of accounts flagged nationally  has strained the capacity of this reporting chain to generate timely, actionable freezes before funds are withdrawn or converted to cryptocurrency.

The IT Act, CERT-In, and Cyber Enforcement

The Information Technology Act, 2000, together with provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, provides the criminal-law basis for prosecuting mule account operators, aggregators, and the fraudsters who direct them. CERT-In's role sits slightly upstream of the banking layer: it issues advisories on phishing, fake payment gateways, and compromised digital infrastructure that fraud syndicates use to recruit mule account holders and move money. The Ministry of Home Affairs' I4C coordinates the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and the 1930 helpline, which allow victims to report fraud and trigger a limited window for freezing beneficiary accounts. I4C has also issued direct public alerts against illegal payment gateways built on mule accounts, warning citizens not to rent or sell their bank credentials to intermediaries.

The Coordination Gap

None of these institutions is short of legal authority. The gap is operational: banks, the RBI, FIU-IND, state police cyber cells, the CBI, and I4C each hold a piece of the picture, but no single agency has a real-time, end-to-end view of an account from opening to fraud to freeze. A mule account can be flagged by one bank's internal monitoring, reported through a completely different victim's complaint in another state, and investigated by a third jurisdiction's cyber police with each step introducing delay. The Indian Banks' Association has publicly pushed for the RBI to be given clearer power to directly freeze accounts flagged as mule accounts, rather than requiring each bank to act unilaterally or wait for a police request, precisely because this fragmentation lets fraudsters withdraw or launder funds within hours of a transaction.

Policy Recommendations

1. Mandatory video-KYC and biometric re-verification for all new accounts opened through business correspondents and third-party agents, with personal liability for verifying bank officials found complicit.

2. A statutory, RBI-backed mechanism allowing banks to freeze accounts flagged by MuleHunter.ai-type systems or FIU-IND intelligence within hours, rather than only after a formal police complaint.

3. A unified, interoperable case database linking the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, FIU-IND's STR system, and state cyber cells, so that an account flagged once is visible to every agency instantly.

4. Stronger due-diligence audits of banking correspondents and cooperative banks, which recur disproportionately in mule account cases relative to their share of total accounts.

5. Public financial-literacy campaigns targeted at the economically vulnerable groups most often recruited as unwitting mule account holders, paired with clear legal guidance distinguishing victims from willing participants.

Conclusion

The branch-level mule account cases surfacing across Delhi and other cities are not isolated policing stories; they are a live audit of India's AML and KYC architecture. The RBI, FIU-IND, CERT-In, and law enforcement agencies each have credible tools and legal mandates like MuleHunter.ai, PMLA reporting, IT Act prosecutions, and I4C's coordination portal chief among them but fraud syndicates continue to outpace the system by exploiting the seams between institutions rather than any single point of failure. Closing that gap requires less new law and more operational integration: faster account freezes, verified accountability at the point of account opening, and a shared, real-time picture of mule networks across every agency involved. Until banks, regulators, and investigators can act as one system rather than several disconnected ones, every dismantled racket will simply be replaced by the next.

References

1. https://aninews.in/news/national/general-news/delhi-police-arrests-bank-deputy-manager-in-83776792-crore-mule-account-case-linked-to-159-cyber-fraud-complaints20260610130737/
2. https://the420.in/delhi-bank-manager-mule-account-cyber-fraud-case/
3. https://www.business-standard.com/finance/news/what-are-mule-accounts-cybercrime-banking-layer-india-fraud-rbi-126062400855_1.html
4. https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/centre-freezes-450-000-mule-bank-accounts-used-in-cyber-fraud-schemes-124111200320_1.html
5. https://www.medianama.com/2025/04/223-iba-rbi-cyber-fraud-measures-freeze-bank-accounts-cybercrime/
6. https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/india%2Fcentre-warns-of-illegal-payment-gateways-and-mule-accounts-3252723
7. https://www.deccanherald.com/india/over-85-lakh-mule-accounts-in-700-bank-branches-used-by-cyber-criminals-cbi-3604229
8. https://website.rbi.org.in/en/web/rbi/-/notifications/master-direction-know-your-customer-kyc-direction-2016-updated-as-on-may-04-2023-lt-span-gt-11566
9. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/15402/1/moneylaunderingact2002.pdf
10. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/13116/1/it_act_2000_updated.pdf
11. https://www.mha.gov.in/en/division_of_mha/cyber-and-information-security-cis-division/Details-about-Indian-Cybercrime-Coordination-Centre-I4C-Scheme

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Executive Summary 

A video of a concert allegedly held on a beach in Tel Aviv, Israel, is circulating on social media. It is being shared with the claim that thousands of Israeli citizens recited the Hanuman Chalisa in Hebrew during the event.The post also links the event to Indian pilot Captain Smit Machhar, claiming that the programme was organised in his honour for saving the lives of passengers aboard a FlyDubai aircraft in September 2026.

CyberPeace Research found the viral claim to be false. Our research revealed that the video is AI-generated and is being shared with a misleading claim.

Claim

On October 27, 2026, an Instagram user shared the viral video with the caption: “On Tel Aviv beach, Israelis beautifully sang the Hanuman Chalisa in Hebrew in honour of our Indian pilot, Captain Sumit. He had recited this powerful ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ mantra during an attack by an Omani terrorist on a FlyDubai flight, thereby saving the lives of many Jewish people.” The post link, archive link and screenshot are provided below.

https://www.instagram.com/reels/De_r8uSzGuh/

https://archive.ph/wip/sxUnQ

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Fact Check

To verify the viral claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords. However, we did not find any credible media reports confirming the claim.

As part of our research, we scanned the viral video using the AI detection tool SIGHTENGINE. According to the results, the video is 99 per cent likely to be AI-generated.

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As part of our research, we scanned the viral video using the AI detection tool Truthscan. According to the results, the video is 91 per cent likely to be AI-generated.

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Conclusion

Our research found that the viral video is AI-generated and is being shared with a misleading claim.

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Introduction

Google Play has announced its new policy which will ensure trust and transparency on google play by providing a new framework for developer verification and app details. The new policy requires that new developer accounts on Google Play will have to provide a D-U-N-S number to verify the business. So when an organisation will create a new Play Console developer account the organisation will need to provide a D-U-N-S number. Which is a nine-digit unique identifier which will be used to verify their business. The new google play policy aims to enhance user trust. And the developer will provide detailed developer details on the app’s listing page. Users will get to know who is behind the app which they are installing.

Verifying Developer Identity with D-U-N-S Numbers

To boost security the google play new policy requires the developer account to provide the D-U-N-S number when creating a new Play Console developer account.  The D-U-N-S number assigned by Dun & Bradstreet will be used to verify the business. Once the developer creates his new Play Console developer account by providing a D-U-N-S number, Google Play will verify the developer’s details, and he will be able to start publishing the apps. Through this step, Google Play aims to validate the business information in a more authentic way.

If your organisation does not have a D-U-N-S number, you may check on or request for it for free on this website (https://www.dnb.com/duns-number/lookup.html). The request process for D-U-N-S can take up to 30 days. Developers are also required to keep the information up to date.

‍Building User Trust with Enhanced App Details

In addition to verifying developer identities in a more efficient way, google play also requires that developer provides sufficient app details to the users. There will be an “App Support” section on the app’s store listing page, where the developer will display the app’s support email address and even can include their website and phone number for support.

The new section “About the developer” will also be introduced to provide users with verified identity information, including the developer’s name, address, and contact details. Which will make the users more informed about the valuable information of the app developers.

Key highlights of the Google Play Polic

1. Google Play came up with the policy to keep the platform safe by verifying the developers’ identity and it will also help to reduce the spread of malware apps and help the users to make confident informed decisions about the apps they download. Google Play announced the policy by expanding its developer verification requirement to strengthen Google Play as a platform and build user trust. When you create a new Play Console Developer account and choose organisation as your account type you will now need to provide a D-U-N-S number.
2. Users will get detailed information about the developers’ identities and contact information, building more transparency and encouraging responsible app development practices.
3. This policy will enable the users to make informed choices about the apps they download.
4. The new “App support” section will provide enhanced communication between users and developers by displaying support email addresses, website and support phone numbers, streamlining the support process and user satisfaction.

Timeline and Implementation

The new policy requirements for D-U-N-S numbers will start rolling out on 31 August 2023 for all new Play Console developer accounts. The “About the developer” section will be visible to users as soon as a new app is published. and In October 2023, existing developers will also be required to update and verify their existing accounts to comply with the new verification policy.

Conclusion

Google Play’s new policy will aim to enhance the more transparent app ecosystem. This new policy will provide the users with more information about the developers. Google Play aims to establish a platform where users can confidently discover and download apps. This new policy will enhance the user experience on google play in terms of a reliable and trustworthy platform.