Police are facing difficulty unravelling the case of the embezzlement of cash from several branches of the Dutch Bangla Bank in Dhaka, Cumilla and Chattogram. After the incident, police arrested six Ukrainians though the Bangladeshis linked to the ATM fraud group have not been identified as yet.
In the meantime, there were embezzlement incidents at Pubali Bank ATM booths in Cumilla and Chattogram and they have not been solved either.
Unless the fraud rings are identified, the banking sector may face a huge loss.
To unearth the full ring of card fraudsters, support is being taken from INTERPOL and FBI. Investigating officer of DB, inspector Arifur Rahman, said: “We suspect that Bangladeshis are also linked to this and therefore, information is being taken on several people based on CCTV footage.”
On Jun 1, last year, fraudsters took money from Dutch Bangla Bank’s Khilgaon branch and soon, the police arrested six Ukrainian citizens while one person fled.
The electric devices found from the Ukrainians are being tested at the forensic labs.
An embezzlement case was lodged on behalf of the Dutch Bangla Bank while CID lodged a case under the money laundering prevention law.
Police super of CID’s organized crime department, Mostafa Kamal said: “We are trying and have not made any notable progress as yet.”
“We recovered some mobiles and i-pads from the foreigners but could not open them,” he added.
On Nov 16 and 17 last year, fraudsters took around Tk 650,000 from Pubali Bank ATMs but based on CCTV footage, the police have not been able to arrest anyone.
One CID official says: “This ring fraudsters is very skilled in IT and they carry the work in such a way that identifying them is difficult. The same ring is stealing from ATM booths across the world. Initially, it was believed that they used a malware named Tyupkin but no details about this have come out as yet.”