A man has filed a case against nine named and three to four unnamed individuals for allegedly scamming him through the cyber ponzi scheme Metaverse Foreign Exchange (MTFE).

In a case filed with New Market Police Station on Sunday under the Digital Security Act, 2018 and the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947, complainant Abul Kashem  accuses them of embezzling Tk 12.74 lakh which he invested on the company's app between December last year and August 2, 2023.

He is a resident of Dhaka's Bhashantek area.

The named accused are Masud Al Islam, Md Saiful Islam Khan, Saidul Islam Bhuiyan, Mobashirul Ibad, Sirajum Munir, Tofail Ahmed, Habibur Rahman, and Rashedul Islam.

Police suspect that Masud, a Bangladeshi expatriate in Dubai, used to oversee MTFE's Asia region, said Sub-Inspector Abdur Rouf of New Market Police Station.

"We will gather more information about the accused following an investigation," he added.

The Criminal Investigation Department of police estimates that around five lakh people might have been scammed by the cyber ponzi scheme MTFE, losing several thousand crores of taka. MTFE is a 'so-called' Dubai-based trading company, just vanished into thin air and stopped paying investors.

It introduced itself as a trading service provider for online investment in foreign exchange, commodities, stocks, stock indexes, and other products and promised unusually high returns to potential investors on their investments in a short span of time.

Most of the victims are from Dhaka, Barishal, Rajshahi, Cumilla, Naogaon, Kushtia, Brahmanbaria, and Satkhira, CID said following the primary investigation.