Leader of fraud gang which targeted mobile banking users, held in Dhaka

Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) today claimed to have arrested the leader of fraud gang, who had been misappropriating money from mobile banking users, from Dhaka's Mirpur area last night.

Sohel Ahmed, 36, used to collect account numbers of mobile banking users from agents and swindle money from accounts by collecting PIN numbers from the users through various tricks, said Lt Col Rakibul Hasan, commanding officer of Rab-3 at a press briefing at his office in Dhaka.

Acting on tip off, a team of Rab-3 arrested Sohel, hailing from Barishal, from the first floor flat of a five- storey building in Block-C in Mirpur around 11:30pm after conducting a drive there, said Rakibul.

The Rab team also recovered huge number of mobile SIM, Multi SIM Gateway device, modem and a laptop from the flat, the Rab official said.

During a primary interrogation, Sohel admitted to Rab that his gang collected the account numbers of mobile banking users, especially those who used to transact large amounts of money, from the agents of different mobile banking service providers.

Later, they collected passwords from the account holders, after making a call with a spoofed (cloned) number belonging to the official number of mobile banking service providers.

Later, they embezzled money by using the passwords, the Rab official quoted Sohel as saying.   

Cloning of SIM cards is a system through which fraudsters make calls using a person's number, according to Rab.

Sohel had been swindling people's money in such way through mobile banking service since 2017, said the Rab's commanding officer.