Police in separate raids on Friday arrested four members of a fraudulent ‘magnetic coin’ gang along with Tk 19.50 lakh in cash in Dhaka’s different areas under Adabar police station.
The arrested are Iftekhar Ahmed, 44, Abu Naeem Md Faizanul Haque alias Naeem, 48, Md Abdul Halim Talukder Qureshi, 42, and Abul Kalam Azad, 46.
Adabar thana police arrested the four fraudsters while conducting drives at Prince Bazar, Shekhertek, Shuchona Community Centre, Krishi Market and other areas under Adabar police station from 12:10am to 7:00am.
During the drives, four ‘antique metal coins’, a bank cheque of Tk 50 lakh, Tk 19.50 lakh in cash, 10 mobile phone sets were seized from their possession.
‘The arrestees have long been using various techniques to defraud people with huge amounts of money,’ deputy commissioner of Tejgaon division, Ibne Mizan, told a news briefing at the DMP media centre in the capital.
Adabar police said that eight months ago, a tenant’s of Mizanur Rahman introduced him [Mizanur] to the accused Iftekhar Ahmed at Mizanur’s office in Banani.
There, Iftekhar told Mizanur in detail about the business of ‘antique metal coins’ and allured him to buy the coins.
Iftekhar also said that there was a huge demand for these coins in various institutions in Japan and the United States of America. He also said that they would be able to sell the coins to those institutions at a very high price.
Iftekhar introduced Mizanur with some fake foreign representatives Abu Naeem Faizanul Haque and Abdul Halim Talukder, who were also arrested in Gulshan on September 18, 2024.
They gave Mizanur the idea that the market value of each of the metal coins would be approximately $ 20 billion.
They also tested the authenticity of the ‘antique metal coins’ through their own fake chemist Abdul Halim and submitted a report to Mizanur.
In continuation of this, on October 27, 2024, Mizanur paid them Tk 45 lakh in advance for the purchase of ‘antique metal coins’ in a building near Japan Garden City under Adabar police station.
He later gave them another Tk 75 lakh in cash and a cheque of Tk 50 lakh of Islami Bank Bangladesh as per their demand for the purchase of the antique metal coins.
Later, Mizanur verified and found out that the said metal coins were fake and he had been the victim of a unique fraud.
Mizanur Rahman filed a regular case regarding the matter with Adabor police station.
During the primary interrogation it was revealed that the arrested were members of an ‘Inter-district magnetic coin fraud ring’. They have been defrauding people in different parts of the country for a long time.
There are multiple cases against the arrested people in different police stations.