ATM scam: Police looking for Bangladeshi youth

Police are now looking for a Bangladeshi youth suspecting his involvement with the Ukrainian nationals held for Dutch Bangla Bank’s automated teller machines (ATMs) theft recently.

Officials of Detectives Branch (DB) of police came to know about the Bangladeshi man after scrutinising footages of CCTV installed in Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport area in Dhaka.

The investigators suspect that another group might be involved with international hackers.

In the CCTV footage, the Bangladeshi man wearing a white T-shirt was seen talking with the Ukrainians who landed at the airport on May 30. Later, they were seen together coming out of an airport’s terminal gate. The youth later went to another direction.

The DB officials suspected that the man later met the Ukrainians and picked-up them in a vehicle.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police circulated photos and videos of the youth today to trace him out. If anyone identifies the man or came to know his whereabouts has been requested to contact the additional deputy commissioner of Khilgaon zonal team (01713 398596).

Meanwhile, another Ukrainian Vitalii Klimchuk, 31, who escaped the arrest on June 1, is still at large.

The cybercriminals came to attention after police arrested six Ukrainian nationals on June 2.

According to investigators, the seven suspects landed in Dhaka together on May 30 and stole money from an ATM booth in middle Badda the very next day.

Later in the investigation, it came out that nine ATMs of DBBL had fallen prey to the international hacker group who stole around Tk 16 lakh.

In this method, the card was inserted in the ATM and the machine’s connection with the bank’s server got severed, after which the suspects just took money out. The method also left no record of the transaction in the bank’s server.

DB sources, quoting an IT expert, said although such kind of heist was new to Bangladesh, it has been seen in other countries where criminals used Tyupkin, a strain of malware, to empty ATMs.

Two cases were filed in connection with the ATM theft.