Careful who you befriend online

A transnational syndicate embezzled a significant amount of money by blackmailing Bangladeshi university and college students, as well as businessmen.

The mastermind of the syndicate, Shakil, is based in India but has agents in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The female members of the group would befriend their targets on social media, and then pretend to be in an intimate relationship with them. Subsequently, they recorded private moments during video chats and threatened the victims that they would spread the videos unless they paid them money.

The Financial and Social Media Crime Investigation team of the Cyber and Special Crime Division of the Detective Branch disclosed the findings yesterday, following the arrest of Tipu Sultan, 27, and Moslem Rana, 28 -- two Bangladeshi agents of the syndicate from Dhaka, on Wednesday.

Saifur Rahman Azad, additional deputy commissioner of DB police, said, "We have got details of two Indian, three Pakistani, and two Bangladeshi nationals of the syndicate so far."

"We will inform the embassies concerned through diplomatic channels. For this, we are sending a letter to the police's Special Branch," he said.

The incident came to the fore after a college student filed a case with Shahbagh Police Station on December 19. He received a friend request on Facebook from an ID named -- "Deepika Agrawal" -- on August 29.

On September 1, Deepika sent some of the victim's videos and pictures to his WhatsApp number and asked him to pay Tk 1,00,000.

Although, Deepika was using an Indian number, a Bangladeshi mobile financial service number was given for payment. The victim replied he did not have that money and a deal was made to pay Tk 25,000.

ADC Saifur said the call was made from Pakistan. After the money was sent to the Bangladeshi MFS number, the syndicate purchased cryptocurrency online and shared the details with their contacts in Pakistan.

"For the job, Bangladeshi agents retained 25 percent of the collected sum, Pakistani agents kept 25 percent, and the remaining 50 percent was sent to the mastermind in India," he added.

Regarding the number of victims, Saifur said generally people don't file complaints in such cases. "But we have already received eight general diaries. We suspect there will be a huge number of victims," he said.

Saifur said they have found a transaction history of around Tk 1.5 crore in their MFS numbers.

Investigators said the arrestees used to live in Karail. They interacted with the Indian mastermind through social media.