Woman loses Tk 80,000 to fraudster ring inside bank

The incident took place at the Islami Bank branch in Lakshmipur, police say

A woman has allegedly lost Tk 80,000 to fraudsters after being misled inside a bank in Lakshmipur.

The incident took place at the Islami Bank branch in the city's Chak Bazar Mosque Market on Thursday, said Sub-Inspector Fazlul Haque of Lakshmipur city police outpost.

A 6.5-minute CCTV footage of the incident has been shared on social media.

The victim is Selina Begum, a resident of Lakshmipur’s Banchanagar.

CCTV footage shows three people inside the bank. One wore a panjabi, a cap, and had a white beard.

The other two were in shirts and trousers, and one of them also had a beard.

They were spending a lot of time inside the bank, lurking especially around the place where the receipts for depositing money were kept.

At one point, the person wearing panjabi sat down on the sofa. Selina was counting money there. At that time, he took the money from Selina and let one of the other men count it.

In the meantime, the man counting money took some money out of his wallet and gave it to the woman.

Later when the victim went towards the counter, three members of the gang were seen leaving the bank.

Selina said, “I withdrew Tk 200,000 from my bank account and sat on the sofa. Of this, I counted Tk 100,000 and put it in my purse.

“As I was counting the rest, an older man approached and asked me to check for torn notes, showing me some damaged notes he said he had received.

“I don’t know what happened after that, I gave him all my money, and he sent me to the counter with a torn note to change it. When I returned, they were gone.”

However, the victim claims the fraudsters took Tk 80,000.

The bank’s manager Ayub Ali said, “The victim filed a complaint with the police station. Later, police came and took the CCTV video footage.

“The person whom the victim had given money to stole it. If she was having problems counting the money, she could have come to me. It is not right to hand money to strangers.”

Investigating officer SI Fazlul said CCTV footage has been collected and efforts are being made to identify the members of the fraud ring.

On Mar 23, a woman named Selina Akhter lost money to a fraud ring inside the same branch of Islami Bank. She later filed a complaint with the police station.

Even though 25 days have passed since the incident, police have not been able to identify or arrest anyone.