3 arrested for cheque fraud

Rapid Action Battalion has arrested three people of a gang that robbed people of their money by withdrawing cash from their bank accounts with stolen or forged cheques.
Rab Media Wing Director Habibur Rahman last night during a press briefing at Rab headquarters said they, acting on a tip off, arrested Toslimur Rahman alias Murad Monir, 45, at Mirpur Tuesday night and following his information captured Shafiqul Alam, 55, and Abdul Mannan alias Shamsuzzaman, 32, at Badda.
They also recovered 623 cheques, most of them fake, of 34 banks and seized 15 Bangladeshi passports with five fake Libyan visas, 74 fake Egyptian revenue stamps, and a significant amount of materials for making fake cheques.
Habibur said the gang stole over Tk 1 crore over the last one year.
During primary interrogation, the trio admitted that there were several others in the gang which have been operating in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet and several other places.
The arrestees told Rab that they with the help of colluding post office employees steal cheques sent via mail from abroad. They later just withdrew the money using the cheques.
Toslimur had been arrested on December 9 last year when he was caught trying to cash such a cheque at a bank in Mirpur. He got bail and was back to his old tricks.
The trio told Rab that they with camera phones take photos of cheques of unassuming account holders at banks when the clients are withdrawing money. The trio then makes a fake cheque of the bank and forges the signature of the account holder according to the photo.
They then cash the fake cheque from a different branch of the bank and they never withdraw more than Tk 1 lakh at one go to avert getting caught.
The gang was also involved in human trafficking, Rab claimed.