Ehsanul Haque Jasim :Police have arrested a foreigner and three other bank officials for their suspected involvement with the recent ATM card scam in Dhaka in which miscreants swindled out money from the booths by using duplicate cards.A squad of Detective Branch (DB) of police arrested the four persons from Gulshan area in the city on Sunday night. The arrestees have been identified as Polish citizen Piotr Szczepan Mazurek and three officials of City Bank Moksed Ali Maksud, Rezaul Karim Shaheen and Refaz Ahmed Rony.With the arrest of the foreign national on Sunday night, two foreign nationals have so far been detained over the ATM card scam. Earlier on February 18, police detained another foreigner from a European country in connection with this fraud. A Dhaka court on Monday granted six days remand for each of four arrestees over the ATM scam in Dhaka in which at least Tk 20 lakh was reportedly swindled out from various booths. Metropolitan Magistrate Md Mazharul Islam passed the order after police produced them before the court with a 10-remand prayer for each of them.DB Police’s Sub-Inspector Sohrab Hossain, also the investigation officer of the case, said that the arrestees are directly involved with the ATM card scam. They need to be remanded to find out whereabouts of others involved with the incident, he added. Deputy Commissioner (media and public relations) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Maruf Hossain Sardar said that the foreigner was held after watching video footage captured in the closed-circuit cameras of ATM booths.Alongside with arrest of the foreign national, the DB police also seized a Polish passport and a German national identity card from Piotr. The passport was fake, while the authenticity of the German identity card was being doubted by law-enforcers. The foreign citizen entered Bangladesh using a false name, according to police. During primary interrogation, Piotr said that he was born in Ukraine, but he is a Polish citizen and his real name is Thomas. He became Piotr after stealing a passport of a German citizen named Piotr.Police said that Piotr also confessed that an international gang was involved in the debit card forgery and the gang is active in Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Poland in East Europe. Piotr had planned the theft along with another Ukrainian and a Bulgarian national.It was the first of its kind of ATM card scam in Bangladesh. Using forged cards, the gang looted a large amount of money from ATM booths of UCBL (United Commercial Bank Limited), City Bank and Eastern Bank Limited in the city on February 7, 8 and 9.Later, police identified four to five foreigners suspecting them involved with the incident. The suspected foreigners are from an east European country. Earlier, police arrested a foreigner from a European country on February 18. Passport of several countries were seized from his possession. Latest of such incident was tracked at an ATM booth of Eastern Bank Limited at Shewrapara of Mirpur in city. The central bank was prompted to order EBL to reimburse all the affected clients. It also told all banks to install anti-skimming devices and take necessary steps to avoid such incident in the future.In a complaint filed with Banani Police Station on February 12, the UCBL authorities said that at least Tk 1.26 lakh was misappropriated through ATM card forgery. City Bank also filed a complaint with police.
