Theft of Phone Data: 2 fraudsters detained

Beware when you are handing your mobile phone to a technician for servicing. Fraudsters might clone your IMO messaging account, follow your private chat sessions and blackmail you for money.

The Rapid Action Battalion picked up two suspected fraudsters with 15,000 photos of over 100 women from Dhaka and Gopalganj in the last two days, Lt Col Tuhin Mohammad Masud, commanding officer of Rab-3, told reporters yesterday.

Alamin Sheikh Sabuj, 26, was detained in the capital's Shahbagh area on Sunday and Sahadat Hossain Madhu, 25, was picked up from Gopalganj's Muksudpur upazila yesterday.

Sahadat has been running a mobile phone servicing shop in Muksudpur for about 10 years. His fried Alamin, also from the same upazila, lives in Dhaka.

Addressing a press conference at the Rab Media Centre in the city's Karwanbazar, Tuhin said the detainees, both mobile phone technicians, used to target their clients, mainly young girls, expatriates and their relatives.

According to the Rab, the two transferred all the mobile phone data of their targeted clients to their phones. If there was any IMO account on the phone, the technician would install a mirror account into his phone using a verification code. Thus, the same IMO account would remain open in both the phones.

The detainees used to follow chat sessions and download private data like photos and videos. Later, they would set traps to blackmail the victims, Tuhin told journalists.

If any of the victims was offline, the technician would impersonate the original IMO user to chat with his/ her relatives or friends abroad and would trick them into sending money on an urgent basis through mobile banking platforms, he added.

They would also hack the accounts of the original users' friends or relatives by using the same trick.

The Rab official said the fraudsters became successful in around 70 percent cases as most of the phone users lacked enough knowledge on IT.

“Although there are very few complaints about such incidents, we find the number of victims is very high following the arrest of any fraudster,” he added.

The Rab also claimed to have seized two computers, nine mobile phones and numerous porn videos from the arrestees.