Aiming to dodge the law enforcers, the illegal Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) syndicates have been shifting their business and offices to different upazilas of Chittagong from the port city, said investigators.
The syndicates have also been misusing modern technology and procuring powerful equipment by ordering them online, they added.
The pieces of information surfaced after the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB-7) arrested three people and seized a huge cache of VoIP equipment worth Tk 60 lakh in saparate raids in the city’s Khulshi and Bayezid areas and at Fatickchhari upazila in the district early Saturday.
During the raids, as many as 8816 SIM cards of different mobile operators were recovered from the possession of the arrestees--Md Salauddin,33, Md Imon Uddin, 21, Md Abu Taleb,25, said RAB sources, adding, they hail from the district.
Salauddin was arrested from Fatickchari upazila while Imon from Khulshi and Taleb from Bayezid area, RAB-7’s Deputy Director (DD) Lt Commander Ashequr Rahman told a press briefing in the city.
The seized items include ten channel banks, two Flexiload servers, six T-TP link Routers, one D-link router, four pen drives, eight laptops, 12 modems, 11 air coolers, one tab, one 01 adaptor, 139 GSM antennas, 12 cell phones, 49 Grameen SIM cards, 415 Robi SIM cards, 1988 Airtel SIM cards, 6360 Teletalk SIM cards and four Banglalink SIM cards.
According to the RAB official, Flexiload servers are new in Chittagong as the law enforcing agencies had not seized such kind of device earlier.
Using the servers, the SIM cards can be automatically researched without using any mobile cards or transferring balance for VoIP connection, he said.
“The syndicates have been importing the state-of-the-art devices by ordering online as they have been shifting their offices and business from the city to the upazila level,” he further said.
The arrestees were later handed over to respective police stations while legal measures were being taken in this connection.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
