Selling corporate SIM cards to criminals

Pre-activated SIM cards are being used to issue threats, extort money, run VOIP business and other criminal activities -- making it difficult for law enforcers to track down the culprits using them. 

Rab made the claims yesterday, a day after arresting Tanvirur Rahman, a senior executive (business sales) of Grameenphone and Towfiq Hossain Khan, a SIM distributor from the city's Mirpur area.

Towfiq used to make all the arrangements to pre-activate SIM cards, duplicating the information and fingerprints provided by institutions earlier, to avail corporate SIMs. Tanvir used to activate them without verification, said Chowdhury Monjurul Kabir, commanding officer of Rab-4, at a press briefing at Rab media centre.

Around 867 SIM cards were pre-activated this way in the name of 42 companies between June 9 and June 11 this year, he said.

Rab officials seized more than 550 pre-activated corporate SIM cards, a laptop and nine tablet PCs from their possession.

The SIMs were being sold for Tk 500 to 5000, mostly to criminals. The current price of a SIM card is around Tk 100, Rab officials said.

A company or institution can collect as many corporate SIM cards as needed, using valid documents, National ID card (NID), and fingerprint of the nominated person, Rab said. An individual can purchase up to 15 SIM cards against their NID.

The distributors used to pre-activate the SIM cards once a company collected corporate SIMs from them, according to Rab sources.

The law enforcement agency came to know about this forgery while investigating a general diary filed by a Sri Lankan national with Bhashantek Police Station on September 19.

One Mamun called the foreigner from two Grameenphone numbers and demanded Tk 10 crore as extortion, threatening to kill him if he failed to pay up.

While investigating the allegation, Rab officials found the calls were made using corporate SIM cards registered in the name of an institution. However, it appeared that the institution had never applied for the said SIM cards.

They then tracked down the distributor Towfiq, and subsequently the Grameenphone official Tanvirur, Rab said.

A large number of pre-activated SIMs -- registered biometrically with duplicate fingerprints and NID -- are streaming into the market, Rab said. Unscrupulous distributors are using individuals' NID and fingerprints to pre-activate SIMs.

Rab officials said they received allegations from at least 17 companies of pre-activating SIMs, forging their documents and fingerprints of nominated persons. Many individuals have also made the same complaints.

Rab urged individual users and institutions to check the number of SIM cards registered with their documents and fingerprints from time to time.

“We are aware that a GP employee was detained by Rab. We are not aware of the details of the allegations nor whether the employee has been formally charged. Therefore, we are unable to comment at this time. Grameenphone has full respect for the laws of the land,” Grameenphone said in a statement yesterday.