The Rapid Action Battalion has arrested four people on charges of being involved in Bitcoin trading.
Hamim Prince Khan, 32, Rahul Sarker, 21, Sanjeeb Dey alias Titas, 28, and Sohel Khan, 20, were arrested from Dhaka’s Darussalam area early on Sunday.
“The arrestees were involved in the transaction of Bitcoin and other digital currencies through virtual wallets, which is illegal in Bangladesh,” Commander Khandaker Al Moin, RAB’s legal and media wing director, said at a press conference.
The four used to buy videos from “dark” pornographic websites and sell them to others, the RAB spokesperson said, adding that they used to hack credit cards to get the money to buy the Bitcoins.
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Bangladesh Bank in a circular issued in 2017 said that cryptocurrencies did not conform to the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947, the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2009, and the Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2012.
Early last month, RAB arrested 12 people, including Ismail Hossain Sumon alias Coin Sumon, for money laundering and online fraud in Bangladesh in the name of illegal Bitcoin business.
According to RAB, Hamim gained computer proficiency after getting admitted to a computer training centre and taking lessons from YouTube videos following his graduation from a Faridpur college in 2013.
At one point, he started to train youths on the use of digital currencies. Rahul, Sanjeed and Sohel were trained by Hamim as well.
Hamim had also conned some of his relatives out of money on the pretext of business investments, RAB claimed.