The Police Detective Division (DB) claimed to have arrested five members of a gang who embezzled bank loans by creating and using fake National Identity Cards (NIDs), business licenses and TIN certificates.

Law enforcement discovered that the union had so far embezzled loans from 11 financial institutions and banks, police said.

Sources said they embezzled a Tk 20 crore loan from financial institutes.

Members first targeted a bank branch and went there to take out a loan for an apartment.

Before visits to the apartment, fraudsters would fix a sign for sale, then take bank agents there. Using the information of a flat seller, criminals would then forge NID cards, TIN certificates and business licenses.

With the help of a section of lower-ranking Election Commission (EC) officials, the gang members uploaded the information from the forged NID card to the servers, before submitting the NID to the bank for verification. Shortly after the bank finished verifying the loan, the gang deleted the information from the servers.

AKM Hafiz Akter, additional commissioner (DB) of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, made the revelation during a briefing yesterday in his media center.

Those arrested are Al Amin alias Jamil Sharif (34), M Hasan Imam alias Bidyut (48), Abdullah Al Shahid (41), Rezaul Islam (38) and Shah Zaman (39).

Police arrested them on Tuesday in the districts of the capital, Khilgaon and Rampura. A private car used in the scam was seized.

Hafiz said a section of lower-ranking employees from EC’s NID wing were involved in the scam. “We reported the problem to the NID authorities. They have already laid off 44 employees.”

Police said Dhaka Bank filed two separate cases with Khilgaon and Paltan police stations on December 8 and 12 for embezzling a TK 1.70 crore loan against apartments.

During the investigation, detectives discovered that those arrested were members of a gang of professional fraudsters. They embezzled loans from various banks by falsifying documents.

Detectives first arrested a man named Biplob on Friday. During questioning, he revealed details of how the scam was carried out.

Intelligence officials said after preliminary questioning, Biplob made a confession in court on Monday.

Al-Amin was first arrested based on information from Biplob. The police later arrested the others after Al-amin leaked information.

Hafiz Akhter said: “We are investigating how many more people are in the union and whether bank officials are involved.”

“We may be able to give more information, after further investigation and questioning of those arrested,” he said.

Earlier, EC’s NID wing said it had identified approximately 1,057 people who received a NID card for the second time for the wrong reasons. The wing has already blocked cards, having filed around 556 complaints against cardholders with EC’s legal wing.