It was 10 years ago that she landed a job at BDF Security Service on a monthly salary of Tk 40,000. Unfortunately, Gazi Nasrin Akhter Naz only got paid in the first two months, prompting her to quit the job three months later.
Mohammed Shahed aka Shahed Karim, founder of the security service, and his men subsequently coaxed her into paying Tk 180,000 for his MLM business. The salaries and investment eventually turned into a big financial loss for Nasrin. She is now a lawyer in the High Court.
Nasrin believes she was one of the earliest victims of Shahed’s fraudulent schemes, before the inception of Regent Hospital, believes the lawyer. She is now considering suing him.
Like Nasrin, 92 people have lodged complaints against Shahed over a 24-hour on the email account and hotline opened by the Rapid Action Battalion on Friday evening.
“We’re calling it hot service and not a hotline. Among the 92 complaints, 20 were reported through email and 72 by phone. Some of the complainants were defrauded over the supplies of sand and stone while others were duped into paying advance money to get bank loans,” said Ashik Billah, director of RAB legal and media wing.
The complaints illustrate how Shahed cheated the common people in different ways, according to the RAB official.
Contractor Mohammed Mostafa lives near Regent Hospital in Uttara’s Sector 10. A group of young men in the neighbourhood working in Regent Hospital approached him in February and asked for Tk 1 million, saying their boss (Shahed) was facing some trouble. They also made threats before taking him to Shahed.
Shahed didn’t seem like a dubious person when he met him, Mostafa told bdnews24.com. He gave him Tk 1 million and Shahed immediately handed him a cheque to be encashed in the last week of February.
But the cheque bounced when Mostafa deposited it. When he went to Shahed’s office about the matter, he was asked to deposit it later. It was again dishonoured and this time Shahed, reproached him for going to the bank without informing him.
When he visited the Regent office again, Mostafa was threatened with serious harm and asked to drop the matter.
“I hope you’re not a representative of Regent Group. I just received a threatening call from one of them,” Mostafa said while speaking to bdnews24.com over the phone.
He filed a complaint against Shahed in the RAB’s ‘hot service’ after his arrest. “When I went to the police station to start a case, they suggested that I go to the court.”
Last year, Shahed signed a contract with Md Karim to supply sand worth Tk 1 billion. Karim paid Tk 600,000 to Shahed as security in line with the contract.
They subsequently applied for a bank loan necessary for the procurement and the entire process cost another Tk 400,000, Karim told bdnews24.com.
When the bank called Shahed’s office to verify the contract between Shahed and Karim, they found the agreement had been terminated cancelled already.
Source: bdnews24.com
