Female con artists in the capital are blackmailing and robbing people using new techniques, a police investigation reveals.
These women mostly operate in Bashundhara City, Hatirpool Eastern Plaza, Elephant Road and Niketon areas, police sources said. There are around 50 organised gangs in the city involving women who use affairs and even marriages to con people.
In a recent drive on Friday, members of the Detective Branch (DB) of police arrested a young model named Rezoana Khaled Ima from the city’s Hatirjheel area for two fraud cases filed against her at Gulshan and Rampur police stations. After the arrest, she was interrogated for two days.
According to DB officials, Ima is an expert con artist who robbed people by identifying herself as either a single woman looking for marriage, the owner of a number of cars, or an event management expert. Sometimes she offered people jobs and told them she had close relations with several ministers.
Sanowar Hossain, DB additional deputy commissioner (ADC) south, told the Dhaka Tribune that Ima started working as a double-dealer in 2007, after her divorce. Her nephew Tanvir Khaled helped her get into the business. She travelled by renting high quality vehicles, ADC Sanowar said.
She tried to contact wealthy men, posing as a single woman looking for marriage, or sometimes offering to sell the rented vehicles showing fake documents, he said. Police said there are many women like Ima who con people in different ways. Law enforcers failed to take action against them, as people who have been conned, especially younger victims, do not report cases out of fear of social stigma.
Our correspondent spoke to two people who had been conned.
On May 3, Imran Hossain, a young businessman and owner of Shuti Traders of Islampur Market, met a young woman named Baby Akter at Coffee House on Elephant Road. They began to speak on the phone frequently.
After a few days, at Baby’s request Imran went to a residential hotel in Mohakhali, and when he arrived a group of people beat him and robbed him of his money, mobile phones and bike. Imran filed a general diary with the Tejgaon police station.
In the first week of April, a Northern University student received a call from a woman who called herself Annyanna. They began speaking and went on a few dates.
The woman took photographs and videos during while they had intercourse and began using them to blackmail him. She threatened to upload the images and videos to Facebook if he did not give her Tk200,000. The student rid himself of the woman by giving her his motorcycle, mobile phone, and the Tk67,000 his family had given him for tuition fees. He told our correspondent that if he filed a case against her his parents would find out, and they would be heartbroken.
Abdul Jalil Mondol, additional commissioner (crime) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said in most of these cases, the victim does not complain to police.
“We take stern action if anyone files complaints. Law enforcers have arrested similar con artists before,” he said.