Need money for surgery of wife undergoing treatment at Sheikh Mujibur Medical University. Ataur Rahman (60) went to the booth of a private bank in the Shahbagh area to withdraw money. A stranger was already there. Ataur ran into trouble while inserting the ATM card at the booth to withdraw money. The person took the ATM card from him saying to help. By handing another card of the same color to Ataur Rahman, he managed to know the secret number (PIN). After some time, Ataur Rahman’s mobile phone received a message to withdraw 1 lakh TK five times.
Ataur Rahman’s cheating incident was last June. Recently, while withdrawing money from a booth in the TSC area of Dhaka University, Umme Atiya, a doctor at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, faced a similar problem. A person who was already inside the ATM booth came forward to help him. He swapped his card saying to help withdraw money.
Umme Atiya said yesterday on Thursday, “When I went to withdraw money, I saw that the card was not entering the ATM booth. Then a person inside the booth took the ATM card from me saying to help. He also had a card in his hand. After a few seconds, he returned the card to me. I try to withdraw money again with that card. The person saw the secret number of the card while standing some distance away.
Unable to withdraw money, Umme Atiya returned from the booth and said, “After a while, I received a message to withdraw 50,000 TK on my mobile phone. Later I informed the matter to the bank and the police.
While investigating these two incidents Shahidul Islam and Mamun Matubbar were identified by the Cyber and Special Crime Division of Dhaka Mohanogor Detective Police (DB). Police arrested them yesterday from a residential hotel in Dhaka. Referring to their initial interrogation, DB said that Shahidul Islam and Mamun Matubbar had seized ATM cards and withdrawn money in those two incidents. They were arrested after seeing the CCTV camera footage of the ATM booths. Since 2015, they have been cheating people’s ATM cards like this. In this case, they used to target women and elderly people. During the day, when the security personnel of the booth went to eat, they entered the booth and cheated people. And in some cases, he used to do this by paying the security staff of the booth.
In this regard, Additional Commissioner of DB Harun-or-Rashid said, that before a person enters the ATM booth to withdraw money, Shahidul Islam used to activate the ‘mobile banking option’ at the booth. This option can be enabled only in those banks which have mobile banking facilities. Shahidul kept the option enabled and it returned when the customer tried to enter the card booth. Shahidul would then take the customer’s card and give the same card he had to the customer, saying that he would help him withdraw the money. He used to know the pin number of the card. Later, Shahidul used to withdraw money from the customer’s card.
According to DB sources, Shahidul has been arrested four times earlier in fraud cases. He is again involved in the same crime after being released on bail. Not only Dhaka, but he traveled to different parts of the country to do this fraud. In this way, he commits five to six frauds every month. He used to get two to three lakh taka from that.
According to DB officials, Shahidul passed SSC and once worked in a garment factory. At one point he learned this technique of ATM fraud himself. Later left the garment factory job and formed a circle. While he is inside the booth, Mamun informs him who is entering the booth from outside. Eighth-class pass Mamun once used to sell tea. After getting acquainted with Shahidul, he joined this circle.
