The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested eight members of an organised gang, including its masterminds, on charges of illegally collecting crores of taka and laundering the money abroad through online gambling sites.
The arrests were made by the CID’s Cyber Police Center (CPC), the agency said in a press release on Sunday.
The arrested individuals had been operating various international and domestic online gambling platforms for a long time. Gamblers on these sites conducted financial transactions using mobile banking services such as bKash, Rocket, and Nagad, various bank accounts, and crypto wallets.
The illegally obtained money was later laundered abroad through cryptocurrency and digital hundi, CID said.
During preliminary interrogation, the arrestees revealed that by luring ordinary people into online gambling, they had been illegally transacting approximately Tk1.80 crore to Tk2 crore daily for the past six months.
A large portion of that money was being laundered abroad, they confessed.
The eight arrested individuals are: Md Ashraf Uddin Ahmed (32) and Sajib Chakraborty (29) of Kishoreganj; Md Ashraful Islam (40) of Kishoreganj; Md Jasim Uddin (36) of Mymensingh; Tayeb Khan (26) and Soumik Saha (28) of Narsingdi; Md Kamruzzaman (36) of Lakshmipur; and Abdur Rahman (47) of Kishoreganj.
On 6 May, a CID team conducted raids in Mymensingh and Kishoreganj districts, arresting the first four members.
Based on information from those arrestees and analysis of 24/7 online surveillance data, on 16 May, raids were conducted in Narsingdi’s Palash thana and Dhaka’s Dhanmondi thana areas, resulting in the arrest of four more members.
CID seized a total of 13 mobile phones (seven from the first operation and six from the second), along with 20 SIM cards, including bKash agent SIMs and SIMs of various operators.
Two specific customer copies of Sundarban Courier Service and multiple courier receipts related to sending fake agent SIMs across the country were also seized.
CID’s Cyber Intelligence and Risk Management Unit conducts regular cyber monitoring to prevent online gambling. From 1 May to date, CID has sent 116 gambling-related websites to BTRC for takedown, and referred 879 MFS accounts and 43 bank accounts to BFIU for illegal transactions.
CID is working with BFIU and international law enforcement agencies to recover the laundered money. Efforts are ongoing to identify the gang’s international network and related crypto wallets.
Notably, CID previously recovered approximately Tk44 crore laundered in the “MTFE” Ponzi scheme.
