‘Biometrically registered Robi SIMs’ used in fraud, money stolen from bKash accounts: Chittagong police

Police in Chittagong have arrested two men on charges of stealing ‘a huge amount of money’ from bKash accounts of ‘hundreds of people’ after fraudulently collecting their mobile-phone SIM cards registered with biometric details.

The frauds have used only Robi SIMs in their venture, the port city’s Superintendent of Police AKM Hafiz Akter has said.

At a media call on Sunday afternoon, he said, “This crime syndicate we’ve caught, they are collecting Robi SIMs with random fingerprints. These same SIMs are also being recollected repeatedly.”

But, the mobile-phone operator has refuted the police claim and said it was impossible for anyone but the real owner to collect SIMs registered biometrically.

Akter said the fraudulent activities using the SIMs had first come to their notice when one Nurunnahar of Satkania’s Rongiparha had lodged a complaint.

She alleged that her Robi SIM, which she also used for her bKash account, was deactivated on Apr 21 without notice.

When she enquired about deactivation of the SIM registered under her name at Robi’s Satkania service centre, she was told that ‘someone else had collected it’.

Nurunnahar told police after she collected the SIM, again she found that Tk 20,400 from her bKash account was gone.

After she filed the complaint with Satkania police, the law enforcers arrested Kutub Uddin and Md Farhad.

They had tracked the duo by the numbers of their National Identity Cards that they had submitted while collecting the SIM.

Police said Kutub and Farhad are former bKash agents and used to work in a SIM distribution agency.

Chittagong district’s Assistant SP (Satkania circle) AKM Emran Bhuiyan told bdnews24.com Farhad had collected 100 SIMs using his NID and Kutub 57.

“Most of these SIMs are owned by different people. We’ve contacted most of them. They said their SIMs were suddenly deactivated and they had to collect them again.”

SP Hafiz Akter told reporters that Robi agents had told them that anyone can collect SIMs under his or her name easily by providing NID and the last amount of credit recharge.

Following the biometric registration, he said, this easy process of collecting SIMs has proved to be a ‘major weakness’.

“Maybe their (Robi) security system hasn’t been strengthened. But this hasn’t happened to the other mobile operators.”

The arrestees told police during questioning that they were ‘targeting the Robi subscribers’ because the SIM collection process from the service centres was ‘too easy’, said ASP Emran Bhuiyan.

“They have been dumping each SIM after withdrawing money from the bKash account. They have stolen a huge amount of money this way.”

He said they were interrogating the two to find out how they had gathered the bKash accounts PIN from those SIMs and what other activities these SIMs had been used for.

But, Robi’s Communications and Corporate Responsibility Vice President Ekram Kabir has denied any weakness on their part.

“A biometrically registered SIM cannot be recollected by anyone except the original owner. There may be some other story in here that we don’t know about yet,” he told bdnews24.com.

ASP Bhuiyan, however, was worried that registered SIMs could be collected by frauds so easily.

“Though their (Kutub and Farhad) goal was to steal money, these SIMs could well be used by militants or saboteurs.”

And if that happens, the innocent may be in for big trouble, he added.