Dhaka, Sep 10 (IANS) Bangladesh police recently arrested six people, including five Chinese and one Taiwanese national, following a raid on a hotel in Cox’s Bazar district that uncovered what investigators believe could be one of the country’s largest organised cyber-fraud operations, a report has stated.
It noted that the six suspects were charged with online fraud and cybercrime and sent to jail after being produced before a Cox’s Bazar court on September 4.
The raid led to the seizure of nearly 2,000 iPhones, dozens of laptops and desktop computers, and a specially designed facility reportedly used to operate hundreds of online identities.
Police said around 250 to 300 others, mainly Chinese and Taiwanese nationals, are still at large, including several wanted fugitives suspected of organising the network, according to a report in Bangladesh’s newspaper The Daily Star.
“The operation raises a question that extends beyond Cox’s Bazar: is Bangladesh beginning to develop the kind of criminal ecosystem that has already turned parts of South and Southeast Asia into major centres of transnational fraud? There is not yet enough evidence to suggest that Bangladesh has become a regional scam hub on the scale of Cambodia or Myanmar. But the Cox’s Bazar case could be an early indication of a problem that, once established, can prove considerably harder to contain,” the report detailed.
It highlighted several vulnerabilities in Bangladesh that have enabled such networks to establish themselves, including relatively easy entry for foreign nationals, weak monitoring of rented properties, limited cybercrime investigation capabilities and the availability of local facilitators.
“The question, therefore, is not simply whether foreign scam operators have arrived in Bangladesh, but whether the country is developing the conditions under which a wider criminal ecosystem could take root,” it stated.
Highlighting that the Cox’s Bazar case did not emerge in complete isolation, the report said that days before the raid, Chinese-linked criminal networks were found operating from Dhaka’s Uttara, Bashundhara and Nikunja areas.
The networks were allegedly involved in online scams as well as illegal VoIP and gambling operations, with investigators also identifying Bangladeshi accomplices in some of these cases.
According to the report, Bangladeshi investigators and the Chinese Embassy have also flagged another worrying pattern involving Bangladeshi women allegedly being deceived into “fraudulent marriages” with Chinese nationals.
“None of these cases has been shown to be connected to the Cox’s Bazar network. But they demonstrate that Chinese-linked criminal activity, and local facilitation of such activity, are already present in Bangladesh,” it added.
–IANS
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