Detective Branch (DB) of police arrested a Polish national and three officials of a local private bank from Gulshan area in the capital on Sunday in connection with the recent ATM scam, in which at least Tk 20 lakh was swindled out from various booths.

The arrestees were identified as Piotr Szczepan Mazurek alias Thomas, the Polish national, and Moksed Al alias Maksud, Rezaul Karim alias Saheen and Refaz Ahmed alias Rony, employees of City Bank. The trio work at the card division of City Bank.
Additional Police Commissioner Monirul Islam of Dhaka Metropolitan police (DMP) briefed reporters at DMP media centre in this regard.
At the briefing, Monirul said a team of anti-cyber crime conducted a drive in Gulshan area on Sunday evening and arrested the foreigner and three others.
“They are directly involved with the ATM fraud,” he added.
The law enforcers seized a Polish passport from the foreigner’s possession. The ID card, which was seized from Piotr, says that he is a German citizen.
During primary interrogation, Piotr said that he was born in Ukraine but he was a German national. After stealing a passport, he changed his name as Piotr from his original name Thomas. He said he had a link with international forgery gang, said Monirul.
Piotr also said the international gang based in different East European countries -Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland and Africa - is also active in different countries of Asia and Africa.
Piotr plotted the scam along with a Bangladeshi expatriate in London, a Bulgarian and a Ukrainian national.
Piotr claimed himself to be a German national. However, police said they are considering Piotr as a Polish citizen as he was carrying a Polish passport.
Earlier on February 12, the authorities of the United Commercial Bank (UCB) filed a case with Banani Police Station as at least Tk 1.26 lakh was misappropriated through ATM card forgery recently.
Later, the City Bank filed a case in this regard.
Footage captured in the closed-circuit television cameras of ATM booths showed a man who appeared to be a white-skinned foreigner attached devices to the ATM booth of a bank.
On February 17, the DB claimed that a citizen of an Eastern European country was suspected to be involved in the ATM card forgery as they had identified the faces of 4/5 foreigners from video footage.
Meanwhile, a Dhaka court on Monday granted six days remand for each of four people arrested in connection with the recent ATM card forgery.
Metropolitan Magistrate Md Mazharul Islam passed the order when DB Sub-Inspector Sohrab Hossain, also the investigation officer of the case, produced them before the court with a 10-remand prayer for each.
“They are directly involved with the incident,” the IO said, adding that they were arrested on a specific allegation so they need to be remanded to find out whereabouts of others involved with the incident.
According to Bangladesh Bank, more than Tk 20 lakh have been withdrawn from ATM booths of several private commercial banks in recent weeks with at least 40 forged debit cards.
According to police, as many as 40 bank cards were cloned to withdraw Tk 20 lakh. As many as 36 customers found their money was stolen from their bank accounts by the card fraud gang.
Some one crore cards are being used regularly in some 7,000 booths in Bangladesh, sources said.
Soon after the ATM card fraud, almost all the 56 banks have been forced to take precautionary measures, including temporarily shutting down transactions through the national payment switch (NPS), to safeguard the interests of clients.

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