Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) identified the men as Anisur Rahman, son of Shamsul Haque and a resident of Hazaribagh’s Bou Bazar area, and Yasin Talukdar, an agent of mobile money transfer service bKash from Dhaka’s Nabipur area.
Anisur and Yasin have taken at least Tk 35-40 lakhs from about 500 government officials in the last five years by threatening to file corruption cases against them, Rab-2 said in a media statement on Saturday.
Rab opened an inquiry after ACC requested them to look into incidents of government officials being threatened by imposters posing as ACC officials.
Rab-2, tasked with the investigation, arrested Anisur from city’s Bou Bazar in the morning. Three mobile phones and 14 SIM cards with fake registration were seized from him. The SIM cards were used for swindling government officials.
His accomplice Yasin was arrested from Nabipur based on information provided by Anisur. Twelve SIM cards with fake registration and bKash accounts and 18 mobile handsets were seized from him.
The duo told Rab that they had been involved in conning since 2014. Rab said it was trying to arrest other members of the fraud gang.