Detective Branch police in Dhaka arrested nine people, including six Chinese nationals, in separate raids in Uttara and Turag on Wednesday afternoon over alleged involvement in online gambling, cyber fraud, illegal digital financial transactions and money laundering.
Cyber Monitoring Leads to Raids
According to Detective Branch officials, the Financial Crime Investigation Team under the Cyber and Special Crime (South) Division detected advertisements linked to online gambling, deposit bonus scams and illegal transactions through bKash and Nagad during routine cyber monitoring on Facebook, YouTube, Telegram groups and fake websites on Wednesday morning.
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Investigators said the suspects allegedly lured people with promises of doubling or tripling their money within a short period through fake gambling and investment platforms. Acting on the information, DB police first raided Sector 13 under Uttara West Police Station and arrested three Bangladeshi nationals, identified as Md. Kawsar Hossain, 24, Md. Abdul Karim, 28, and Rokon Uddin, 40.
Six Chinese Nationals Arrested in Turag
Police later conducted another raid at around 9:10 am in the Rupayan Housing Estate area under Turag Police Station, where six Chinese nationals were arrested. They were identified as MA. JIE, 33, Zhang Jiahao, 22, Liu Jinjie, 32, Wang Shibo, 24, Chang Tiantian, 29, and James Zhu, 43.
During the operations, police recovered three 64-port GSM/GPRS SIM module machines, one 8-port GSM/GPRS SIM module machine and one 256-port GSM/GPRS SIM module machine. They also seized around 280 SIM cards of different mobile operators, several laptops, including Apple MacBook, Lenovo, Asus, HP and Redmi devices, 20 smartphones of various brands, about Tk 605,000 in cash, passports and national identity cards of foreign nationals, and a Toyota microbus.
Syndicate Accused of Laundering Money Abroad
During preliminary interrogation, the detainees reportedly confessed to being active members of an organised syndicate involved in online gambling, cyber fraud, illegal electronic transactions and money laundering.
Investigators said the group collected mobile financial service agent SIM cards registered under different names from various parts of the country and used GSM Gateway devices to keep hundreds of SIMs active at the same time. The SIM cards were allegedly used to process gambling transactions, fraud proceeds and other illegal financial activities.
Police said the syndicate also operated its own online gambling portals and laundered crores of taka abroad, particularly to China. A case has been filed against the arrested persons under the Cyber Security Act with Ramna Police Station.
