The local patrons of 37 foreigners, who were arrested on charges of illegally running Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business at Uttara area in the city, wanted
to use them to siphon off people’s money through forged credit cards in Bangladesh, RAB sources said.
On December 22, a team of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB)-1 conducted an operation at a six-storey building at Uttara Sector-12 and arrested 43 people, including 37
foreigners, on charges of illegally running a VoIP business under the guise of a garments business.
Among the 43 arrested, 37, including eight females, are foreigners. Of them, five are Chinese, 32 are Taiwanese while six others are Bangladeshi nationals. The RAB
team also seized a huge quantity of illegal VoIP equipment.
Speaking about the operation, commanding officer of RAB-1 Lt. Col Kismat Hayat told The Independent, “The arrestees are part of a dangerous international forgery
syndicate in the IT sector as they siphoned off more than Tk. 200 crore from just China and Taiwan through credit card forgery using VoIP business.”
“The syndicate siphoned off huge amounts of money forging credit cards, mobile banking and online banking. They established their hideouts in Bangladesh taking
advantages of the poor monitoring of cyber crime protection systems,” Hayat added.
A RAB high official, who was with the interrogation team at Dhaka Central jail, told The Independent on condition of anonymity, “The arrested 37 foreigners claimed
that they are less educated and do not understand English but actually most of them are IT experts and have the highest IT degrees from different countries.”
“Besides illegal VoIP business, the syndicate used to siphon off money forging credit cards, mobile and online banking of China and Taiwan. They rented the Uttara
residence nine months ago and established their VoIP set-ups with the help of a section of unscrupulous BTCL officials and employees,” the official said, adding that
the arrested had provided them the names of some of their foreign patrons, but they had not yet named their local patrons. They, however, admitted that the local
patrons wanted to use them for siphoning off huge amounts of money through credit cards, mobile and online banking forgery using modern technology, he added.
Courtesy of The Independent
