Dalalplus embezzled Tk41cr: CID

Ecommerce company Dalalplus, which cheated customers with lucrative discount offers, embezzled over Tk41 crore of the customers' money, said the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the police in a case recently filed against the e-scammers.

Along with investigating the customers' complaints against Dalalplus, the CID has conducted investigations under the Money Laundering Act and filed a case against them at the Dhanmondi model police station on 11 August.

Humayun Kabir, special superintendent of the CID's financial crime unit, told TBS, "In the initial investigation, we have found information about the receipt and transfer of around Tk41 crore by Dalalplus."

The accused in the case filed by CID are Dalalplus Director Abu Zubair Hossain Rabbi, Chairman Saleh Uddin Murad and Managing Director Azizuk Haque and three unnamed persons.

Apart from this, the names of two other institutions – Broker Digital Solution Ltd and Freedom71 IT Institute – have been mentioned in the case.

According to the case document, Tk5 crore was transferred from Dalalplus's account in City Bank's Dhanmondi branch to an account of Freedom71 IT Institute in May last year. Later, that Tk5 crore was withdrawn. Then in July that year, Tk50 lakh was transferred in the same way.

That money was transferred from the account of Freedom71 IT Institute to the Kawasaki Cars's account in Pubali Bank's Uttara Model Town branch.

Interrogating Sajeda Khatun Lopa, the owner of Kawasaki Cars, CID officials found that Abu Zubair Hossain Rabbi, owner of Freedom71 IT Institute, paid Tk50 lakh as booking money for buying two Land Cruiser Prados.

The Financial Crime Unit of the CID also found that Rabbi managed the City Bank account of Dalalplus and Freedom71 IT Institute. He withdrew Tk35.57 crore from Dalalplus's account with the help of other accused.

Although known to customers as Dalalplus, the accused entered into an agreement with a payment gateway company through another company called Broker Digital Solution Ltd, claiming that this is their main institution. The money received in the name of Dalalplus by transferring it to an account of Broker Digital Solution Ltd to embezzle it.

The CID examined the accounts of Dalalplus and Broker Digital Solution Ltd in City Bank in Dhanmondi and Rokeya Sarani and found that over Tk180.57 crore has been deposited and Tk178.56 crore has been withdrawn from these accounts. Currently there is over Tk1.95 crore in those two accounts.

Ecommerce company Dalalplus has cheated customers in the name of selling products including mobile phones, motorcycles, and cars under discount offers titled "Tornado", "Typhoon", "Kalboishakhi", "Tufan" and so on.

Dalalplus took more than 45,000 orders between January and October last year from a large number of customers across the country. The company received over Tk126.83 crore in advance as the full price of 8,000 ordered products. Even after receiving the full price, Dalalplus did not deliver 3,604 products nor refund the money.

According to sources at the company, the total value of the pending orders is over Tk75.72 crore.

When the time to deliver the products to the customers was over, the accused closed their office and went into hiding. After that, many defrauded customers filed several cases against Dalalplus, but a large number of them have not yet filed a lawsuit in hopes of getting products or refunds.