The scale of the ATM card forgery currently under investigation may be bigger than anyone expected, investigators said yesterday.
Investigation leads and statements made by arrested German national Piotr Szczepan Mazurek point to a massive forgery conspiracy that involves bank staff, fraudulent company employees, organised crime and possibly even policemen.
Mazurek, a German national who had travelled to Bangladesh on a fake Polish passport, told detectives that his gang had stolen more money from point of sales (POS) terminals than from automated teller machines (ATMs).
He told investigators that his gang had stolen several crores of taka. Only about Tk20 lakhs is believed to have been stolen from ATM booths.
Police sources said forgers had compiled a database of sensitive identity information of as many as 4,000 debit and credit cards over the course of the last year.
Lost money that banks might otherwise have written off as a system loss is being re-examined as the ATM card forgery probe progresses.
Following the filing of cases by City Bank, Eastern Bank and United Commercial Bank, other local banks including Premier Bank have formally expressed concern that their ATMs may also have been hit by forgers, a DB official said, asking not to be named.
Hit by refund claims over suspicious transactions by partner banks abroad, local private banks are now approaching the police’s Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CT) Unit and Detective Branch (DB), he confirmed to the Dhaka Tribune.
Deputy Inspector General of police Monirul Islam, who heads the CT Unit, said information was being collected from local private banks that might be connected to forgeries or false transactions affecting ATMs and POS terminals.
Monirul said investigators had not yet found evidence linking the fraudsters to law enforcement officials.
But a source close to the investigation informed the Dhaka Tribune that Gulshan police station inspector Firoz Kabir had been implicated in the forgeries.
The source went on to say that Firoz had been transferred to the police’s Rangpur Range after preliminary investigations discovered evidence of his involvement.
Investigations into the conduct of two other police officers allegedly connected to the forgery are currently under way.
Modus operandi
Describing the forgers’ modus operandi, Monirul said Mazurek told police detectives that big businesses that made large payments using ATM cards were first identified.
The card information was stolen and the cards were cloned. Insiders in the business were then approached, as were bank staff authorised to clear POS payments, so that illicit transactions would clear, Monirul quoted Mazurek as saying.
Suppliers of POS terminals are being investigated to determine whether they were involved in the forgery scam, police said.
Monirul, also DB chief, said Mazurek had given police investigators the names of at least 40 to 50 businesspeople, hotels and businesses allegedly involved in the scam.
“We are trying to verify whether these individuals and enterprises were involved but we are sensitive to the possibility that they may be being framed,” Monirul added.
Mazurek and City Bank officials Moksed Alam Maksud, Rezaul Karim Shahin and Refaz Ahmed Roni are on a five-day remand for interrogation by police detectives.
They were arrested on February 22, while the DB was investigating two reports of ATM forgery at City Bank and United Commercial Bank. The cases were filed separately at Pallabi and Banani police stations in the capital.
Mazurek is wanted in “several European countries” for similar crimes, Monirul said. “We have been able to verify that Mazurek is a German national who used a fake Polish passport to enter the country. He is married to a Bangladeshi national,” the DB chief added.