The suspected cash card forging racket could not have stolen so much money from so many ATM booths without help from bank officials, a cyber security expert has said.
According to Bangladesh bank, more than Tk20 lakh have been withdrawn from ATM booths of several private commercial banks in recent weeks with at least 40 forged debit cards.
“We have seen that Tk2 lakh have been withdrawn at a time with debit cards whose daily with drawal limits are Tk1 lakh,” Tanvir Hassan Zoha, focal person of the ICT Ministry’s Cyber Security Programme, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
“There is no way this can happen without the involvement of bank officials,” affirmed Zoha, who is assisting the investigation into ATM card forgery.
It is also hard to believe that no official of any of the banks has noticed the activities of the forgers, he said.
The central bank has found nearly 1,200 cards, which were used in those 18 ATM booths in question, are now at risk of facing fraud.
The newly-formed Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit of police, which is assisting Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP)’s Detective Branch (DB) in the investigation, also believes that there is involvement of bank officials.
Yesterday, Monirul Islam, an additional inspector general (AIG) of police in charge of the new unit, said that by analysing CCTV camera footage from ATM booths, they have identified at least one foreign national, who is thought to be from an Eastern European country.
He did not disclose anything further about the suspect for the sake of investigation, but said that they have kept a total of five foreign nationals under watch.
Before making any arrests, investigators are now waiting for a clearer rendering of the CCTV camera footage using technological support, said Monirul, the former chief of Dhaka police’s Detective Branch (DB) who has been recently promoted and given charge of the new unit.
Involvement of bank officials were found In similar card forgery cases in the past; this time also they are seeing the same pattern, the AIG said.
Two and a half years ago, several people, including a private commercial bank official, were arrested in Dhaka in connection with a credit card forgery case. Police are saying that those criminals used similar kind of skimming devices to copy the information from real credit cards of bank clients.
The matter came into light in the past one week after at least two private commercial banks – United Commercial Bank Limited and the City Bank – filed complaints with police regarding withdrawal of money from ATM booths beyond the knowledge of the actual account-holders.
Another private commercial bank – Eastern Bank Limited – issued a statement earlier this week after media reports suggested that their clients too have faced similar fraud.
The CCTV footage supplied by City Bank from one of its booth located in the Kalshi area in Mirpur of Dhaka also showed that the person, who was apparently installing a skimming device in the automated teller machine (ATM), looked like a foreigner.
City Bank’s complaint filed with the Pallabi police station quoted the security guard of the booth as saying that there was a Bangladeshi man with the foreigner.
“There is no reason to think that you need someone highly educated in technology for installing skimming devices in ATM machines. Anybody can do it,” said Tanvir Zoha.