Four scammers arrested over siphoning Tk 3.4cr

A fraudulent group has embezzled crores of taka by changing the ownership of postpaid mobile SIMs and increasing the credit limit by accessing the country's leading mobile network operator Grameenphone's database.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of police said a number of employees of Genex Infosys Limited and Wipro Limited -- two call centres which have contracts with Grameenphone -- are involved in the scam.

Talking to the reporters yesterday, CID Chief Mahbubur Rahman, additional inspector general of police, said that the group took away Tk 3.4 crore against various packages and SIMs.

"When we started the investigation, we saw that several people of the two companies were involved here. We arrested four of them. Two of the arrestees gave confessional statements before a court recently," he said.

The official said they were able to change the ownerships and increase the credit ceiling as they had access to the Grameenphone database.     

After sensing the leak, Grameenphone filed a case with Vatara Police Station in the capital on November 1, 2020 under the Digital Security Act. Then CID's Cyber Investigation Unit got the charge to carry out an investigation.

Mahmudul Islam Talukder, Additional Superintendent of CID's Cyber Police Centre, said apart from handling enquiries by telephone, the call centres also provide other services, such as changing SIM card ownership and increasing credit limits of post-paid SIMs.

The CID official said the arrestees had increased the credit limit of 16 post-paid SIMs after they entered the system in August 2019. Earlier, they registered the SIMs with fake identities. They sold the raised credit to top-up outlets and embezzled Tk 13 lakh.   

In October 2019 and January 2020, they stole a total of another Tk 72 lakh in the same way.

The official said that the individuals maintained contacts with various top-up agents to whom they sold the mobile phone credit at discounted rates. Later, the mobile operator found it had not received the cash against the credit to those post-paid SIMs.   

When Grameenphone sensed the fraud, it froze the suspicious SIMs which held back huge sums of money. However, by that time the fraudsters had stolen lakhs of taka.