Conning people with false promise of VIP SIM cards

Taking advantage of online social networks, fraudsters have been conning people into buying "VIP SIM cards". They use unverified online pages and e-commerce sites for this purpose.

VIP SIM cards are meant to be phone numbers with digit repetitions and patterns that are easy to remember.

They promise to sell these VIP numbers to people after they pay the full amount through cashless transaction methods. After that, they tell the buyers to visit the nearest customer care centre of their chosen operator to collect the VIP SIM.

However, the sellers block their customers' numbers after they receive money. If the customers try from different numbers, they are verbally harassed and then blocked.

Criminal Investigation Department's Cyber Police Monitoring team arrested one conman -- Mithun Sarkar (29) from Madhukhali area in Faridpur on July 25.

The CID recovered Tk 10 lakh from Mithun and also seized his three mobile phones.

"We found ten Facebook pages that Mithun was using to con people," CID's Cyber Police Special Superintendent Rezaul Masud said at a press briefing at its headquarters in Malibagh yesterday.

The VIP numbers with the same last eight digits of 017 series was selling at Tk 20,000; 019 series for Tk 17,000 while 018, 016 and 015 series were selling at Tk 15,000 on Mithun's Facebook page, the CID said.

"He didn't have any VIP SIM cards on him and the Facebook pages were just for conning people," Mohammad Mahmudul Islam Talukder, additional superintendent of CID's Cyber Police Centre, told The Daily Star.

The CID official said the "upper-middle class and high-profile people" contact them for VIP numbers. Many of them get cheated.

He said that some mobile operators earlier used to sell VIP numbers, but after BTRC's instruction, they don't sell it anymore.

CID filed a case against Mithun under the Digital Security Act with Paltan Police Station. He was placed on a two-day remand.