Daraz doppelganger: CTTC arrests man for replicating e-commerce site

They first created a website that looks completely like daraz.com.bd.

They attracted customers into the site posting lucrative advertisements like 50-70 percent discount offers. For creating these advertisements, they used clone pictures collected from other e-commerce sites.

As a trick, they only kept the option to pay through mobile financing services (MFS) to place orders. However, as soon as they received payments, they'd switch off the number and disappear.

The Cyber Crime Investigation Division of Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) unit has disclosed the findings after arresting a syndicate member, Al Imran Juwel (20), on Tuesday.

Based on a tip-off, a CTTC team conducted the drive in Noakhali and arrested him, Chatak Chakma, assistant commissioner of CTTC unit, told The Daily Star yesterday.

The CTTC team also recovered a cell phone, one desktop computer, electronic cards of different financial institutions, and over hundreds of pre-activated cell phones from his possession.

AC Chatak said Juwel bought the domain and hosting on September 18 from ofaex.com. It took around a week to prepare the website to make it look almost exactly like Daraz's website. In just the last one and half months, Juwel embezzled around Tk 10 lakh, said the AC, citing Juwel's bank statement and primary interrogation.

"We are now investigating how Juwel managed to get such a huge number of pre-activated SIM cards with MFS accounts activated. We have come to know that Juwel used to buy the SIM cards for Tk 250 each," said the AC.

A case was filed with the Banani Police Station. Juwel was later place on a two-day police remand. Asked about targeting Daraz, AC Chatak said Juwel also had plans to create a fake site similar to Evaly.com.

Shayantani Twisha, head of PR, media and communication of Daraz.com, told The Daily Star yesterday that they have a content monitoring team to check whether anyone uses the Daraz logo without license.

"We've noticed the fraud a month back and immediately filed a GD and an FIR, after which police took the action."