Man arrested for embezzling money by hacking FB accounts

Detectives have arrested a man on charges of hacking Facebook profiles by using phishing links and later embezzling money.

The social media crime investigation team of Cyber and Special Crime Division at Detective Branch (DB) under Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) arrested Md Mamun Mia, 20, in the early hours of Monday.

He was picked up from Doara Bazar area of Sunamganj with a cell phone in his possession, which he used in his criminal acts. Mamun had previously been arrested on the same grounds. 

Additional Commissioner of DMP AKM Hafiz Akter disclosed the matter at a press briefing at the DMP Media Center in Dhaka on Wednesday, saying that the arrestee had mainly targeted Bangladeshi expatriate women. 

Mamun is an expert in IT-based knowledge, who developed phishing links and sent them to different people via Facebook messenger, he said.

“When the victims clicked on the phishing link, the Facebook interfaces popped up. When the victims entered their Facebook IDs and passwords to access the link, Mamun got those,” the police official said.

Having obtained the passwords, he used to access the victims’ Facebook profiles and change the previous passwords so the real ID-users could not access them further. 

By doing so, Mamun embezzled money from the near and dear ones of the victims, Hafiz said, adding that Mamun even demanded a large sum of money from the victims in exchange of returning them their social media accounts. 

“On being paid, he would return the access to the accounts to their original users. Otherwise, he used to keep the accounts under his control,” said Hafiz. 

The arrestee was remanded for two days on Tuesday.