ATM scam probe reveals involvement of many businesses

Names of different hotels, travel agencies, and some bank officials have come up in the investigation of the recent ATM card scam case, said a high official of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) said yesterday.

Additional Commissioner Monirul Islam said four persons remanded in the case had admitted to interrogators that they conducted fraudulent activities through creating a nexus between a section of corrupt officials of different banks and business entities.

Asked what steps were taken against the bankers and business owners whose names appeared in the investigation, he said, "We are keeping eyes so that they cannot flee. We are verifying the information (about them). We can't tell more until we are sure (about their involvement)."

The arrestees, purported German citizen Piotr and three City Bank officials Moksed alias Maksud, Rezaul Karim alias Shahin, and Refaz Ahmed alias Rony, have all begun to give important information to police, he told journalists at the DMP media centre.

"Piotr was wanted in 3-4 countries on charges of fraudulence and we would seek information from those countries through the Interpol," Monirul said.

On February 12, Eastern Bank detected 21 suspicious card transactions. A fraudster with a fake EBL card used one of the ATM booths of United Commercial Bank Ltd, which sounded off the alarm in UCBL's system, subsequently leading to the unearthing of the crime ring.

Asked whether Piotr told police how much money his gang has stolen from banks, the official said Piotr did not know the exact amount as he lost track of the money after stealing several crore from the banks. The transactions were limited to amounts ranging from Tk 5 lakh to 20 lakh, he said.

"Besides Piotr, two other foreign nationals involved in the scam came to Dhaka. But they left before the crime came to our attention," he said.

"Piotr said one of them was Romanian and the other Ukrainian. But we will try to verify. We will try to gather information about them through the help of the Interpol, agencies of the countries concerned and the embassies."

The ring of fraudsters also included 1-2 expatriate Bangladeshis in London and investigators know their names, while nationals of Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Italy were also involved, he said. "But not all of them came to Bangladesh."

Piotr and his aides used to find a corrupt business entity like a hotel or travel agent that uses a POS (point of sale) machine, and then they would find some corrupt bank officials in the section  concerned of the bank, he said.

After that they made transactions of Tk 5-7 lakh at a time, but the transactions had nothing to do with real business, Monirul said, adding that the higher authorities of the banks did not have any knowledge of the transactions.

"Comparing frauds and the deficits in different banks' transactions may let the banks find out the sources of the deficits."

Monirul assured that DMP officials would talk to the banks and inform them about the "loopholes that allow the scope for such scams. "We are already talking to the experts at Bangladesh Bank."

Piotr, who was the mastermind of the scam in Bangladesh, had the passport of one country and national identity card of another, he said.

Piotr was born in Ukraine and had obtained German nationality. He entered Bangladesh by using the stolen Polish passport of one Piotr Szczepan Mazurek and a one-year business visa that expired recently.