Two Arrested Over Fake UNICEF Job Offers Run Through a Facebook Page
The Detective Branch (DB) of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) has arrested two men accused of embezzling money by luring job seekers with promises of employment in projects of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The DMP confirmed the arrests on Wednesday night (21 October).
The arrested men are Md Mozammel Haque, 29, and Md Al Amin Sardar, 25. According to police, Al Amin is the ringleader of the fraud gang.
The DB said the gang had been advertising fake recruitment notices on a Facebook page called 'Bangladesh Real Job', using UNICEF's name and logo. Seeing postings that traded on the international agency's name, many job seekers applied.
The scam was run in stages. Applicants were first charged 580 taka, supposedly for the sale of an application form. They were then told they had been selected for final appointment and made to pay a further 2,580 taka through the mobile money services bKash and Nagad. As soon as the money was received, the mobile numbers used for the transactions were switched off, leaving victims with no way to make contact.
The scheme came to light during routine cyber monitoring by the DB's Cyber and Special Crime (North) Division. A case was then filed with Ramna Police Station, and investigators began using technology to trace the suspects.
Police said Mozammel Haque was arrested first, at around midnight on Tuesday, from the Radio Colony area of Savar. Acting on information he provided, officers then arrested the gang's ringleader, Al Amin, at about 5 a.m. yesterday from a house in Johuri Moholla in the capital's Mohammadpur.
During the raids, electronic devices used in the fraud, the Facebook page and mobile SIM cards were seized from the two men, the DB said.
In preliminary interrogation, the arrested men told police that for the past two to three years they had been embezzling large sums from thousands of job seekers by boosting and advertising the fake notices — spending money to push the fraudulent postings to a wider audience.
The DB said both men have been sent to court, and operations are continuing to arrest the gang's other members.
With competition in the job market fierce, fraud using the names of international agencies and well-known organisations is nothing new. This case shows once again that fake notices spread on social media, dressed up with a familiar institution's logo, are the fraudsters' main weapon. With the police operation still under way, how many others were involved in the gang and how much money was taken in total will become clear once the investigation is complete.
