The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested two members, including the ringleader, of an organized gang that allegedly defrauded ordinary people of around Tk5 crore through a fake “foreign investment” scheme operated via the Telegram app.
CID’s Special Superintendent of Police (Media) Jasim Uddin Khan confirmed the arrests in a press release issued on Friday.
According to the release, a team from CID’s Dhaka Metro East Division, with technical assistance from the LIC unit, conducted a raid in the early hours of Thursday in the Dhakkamara area of Panchagarh Sadar upazila, where they arrested the gang’s ringleader, Fardin Ahmed alias Pratik, 25.
Based on his information, his associate, Sagar Ahmed, 24, was later arrested from the Ranisankail area of Thakurgaon district.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the arrestees had opened fake Telegram groups under the guise of “foreign investment platforms”, luring people with promises of high returns in a short time.
To make the scheme appear legitimate, some group members — who were in fact part of the gang — would post fabricated success stories and fake investment profits.
Once victims were persuaded to invest, they would transfer money to various bank and mobile financial service (MFS) accounts opened under different names, which the fraudsters would then embezzle.
Two separate cases were filed with the Paltan police station in connection with the scam. After CID took over the investigation, it quickly identified and launched operations against the group.
According to CID, ringleader Fardin Ahmed had been running fake foreign investment groups on Telegram and other social media platforms for quite some time.
He operated more than 30 bank and MFS accounts, as well as multiple SIM cards, under different names for the purpose of conducting fraudulent transactions.
His associate Sagar Ahmed, using a fake Telegram ID named “Rio”, managed another group called “Alexa Wick”, which had seven active members. Through these groups, they defrauded a large number of people under the guise of “online investment opportunities”.
Investigators also discovered that Fardin had devised an elaborate method to convert the illicit funds into cash. He would purchase vehicles from different showrooms through bank transactions, then sell them at a lower price within a month, showing paper losses in order to withdraw the money as cash. This was how the gang “cashed out” crores of taka.
During preliminary interrogation, Fardin Ahmed confessed to the fraud and admitted that more than Tk5 crore had been transacted through accounts under his control.
CID has sought a 10-day remand for the two arrestees in order to trace other members of the syndicate, account holders, and the ultimate destinations of the embezzled funds.
