13 members of a mobile banking fraud gang held

Rab claimed to have arrested 13 members of a fraud gang, who had misappropriated over a crore from mobile banking users.

Several teams of Rab arrested them from the capital and Bhanga upazila in Faridpur early today and recovered Tk 14.5 lakh and some electronic devices they used in the criminal activities, Lt Col Sarwar-Bin-Quashem, Rab's Legal and Media wing director said.

The gang also used to swindle money from bank accounts through debit and credit card forgery, he said.

The arrestees are: Nazmul Jamaddar, Hasan Mir, Ibrahim Mir, Tawhid Hawlader, Mohon Sikder, Parvez Mir, Sohel Mollah, Delwar Hossain, Syed Hawlader, Rakib Hossain, Mohammad Ali, Palash Talukder and Emon.  

This gang became more active during the shutdown as use of mobile banking service increased. It embezzled more than Tk 1 crore in last two months only, Sarwar said.

They are all from Faridpur district and Rab claimed they came to know that at least eight groups are active in such crimes.

The Rab official said some of the gang members used to collect the account numbers of mobile banking users, especially those who used to transact large amounts of money, from agents of different mobile banking service providers.

Later, they collected passwords from the account holders, after making calls from cloned numbers belonging to the official numbers of mobile banking service providers.