OGS Bangladesh – another ponzi scheme on the prowl?

Infographic: TBS

It's the same old trick – an age-old Ponzi scheme dressed in a new suit. Promise jaw-dropping returns, far higher than what banks or the stock markets offer, and lure in the greedy, the desperate, and the uninformed. Keep them hooked with steady payouts for a few months, build credibility, and then disappear.

Bangladesh has seen this before – Destiny, Unipay2u, Evaly – all different names, same playbook. Thousands lost their life savings. Yet, the game goes on. Greed never fades, and financial illiteracy remains a gold mine for con artists.

Enter OGS Bangladesh Limited, a private company registered in Chattogram, seemingly running an empire – e-commerce, Hajj services, travel agency, IT, and real estate. But behind the façade, it thrives on a simple bait: a fixed monthly return of 4-5% on deposits – nearly five times what banks offer.

And the scheme isn't just pulling in reckless risk-takers. Struggling businessmen, ruined stock investors, inflation-hit housewives, expatriate workers with cash to spare, even students – all lining up for the promise of a "risk-free" fortune.

The real hook? A fat commission for referring others. The more you bring in, the more you make. And when asked how the magic works, the recruiters spin a tale of "expert trading" in global commodities, currencies, and crypto markets – the kind of high-stakes game where amateurs get burned.

Bangladesh has seen this before – Destiny, Unipay2u, Evaly – all different names, same playbook. Thousands lost their life savings. Photo: Collected

For those willing to learn, training is on offer. But here's the catch: at the very first session, deposit hunters dissuade newcomers from trying the trade themselves. Just hand over the money, sit back, and watch the profits roll in – until, one day, they don't.

"Better stay hassle-free, rely on our expert team and enjoy at least 4% guaranteed monthly return," Anwar, a commission agent working for OGS, told this reporter, pretending to be his investor.

Depositing cash equivalent to $5,000 will raise the monthly return to 5%, he offered.

On the same mid-February evening at the OGS office on level 14 of Zaman Tower in Paltan, Dhaka, also came a 55-year-old housewife. She is unhappy with her real estate rental income and bank interest against fixed deposits.

Her neighbour, reluctant to disclose the name, withdrew a bank deposit of Tk5 lakh, gave it to the "expert team", and has been enjoying a monthly return of Tk20,000 since June last year.

Her referral income is about to surpass the fixed return as she attracts others.

Even the office staff there are desperate for new clients through their reference.

"I should have started immediately when my friends were asking me eight-nine months ago. Please join us, a huge profit ahead," Mahmud from Cumilla told this reporter, pretending to be a depositor in early February.

More than 3,000 people deposited in the KandirPar, Cumilla OGS office within the office of a local business, "Mitali Trading", according to Mahmud, who began as an investor and later tried hard for a high commission income.

Several individuals at the office estimated that the total sum deposited there should not be less than Tk100 crore; it might have surged to Tk300 crore even.

TBS talked to four individuals in Cumilla who deposited Tk30 lakh to Tk65 lakh individually as high returns lured them to bring more.

Another office nearby in Cumilla was also seeing an increasing number of clients gathering every day.

The increasing number of visitors at the OGS offices in Feni, Chattogram, also surprises the neighbours until the client-hunters offer them to join the scheme.

TBS could not independently verify how many offices OGS opened in the country to attract how many clients or the funds already.

No shareholder directors of the company accepted that they collect deposits from the people when TBS contacted them for comments.

However, Mizanur Rahman, one of the seven in an undercover call by this reporter, said the company has already opened 35 offices across Bangladesh where more than 25,000 people handed over their funds.

Experts analysing OGS offers with unusually high monthly returns, while engaging and incentivising clients to recruit new ones, suspect that the company is expanding its Ponzi scheme to deceive a larger number of people.

"No real-life talent could consistently earn that much every month from any real market," said investment expert Asif Khan, president of CFA Society Bangladesh.

People should be aware of such alluring schemes conning the masses for more than a century, he suggested.

He recalled the spread and collapse of several previous Ponzi schemes including Destiny, Evaly, E-Orange, Dhamaka, MTFE that left several hundreds of thousands of people conned with losing several thousand taka.

With new funds inflow slowing down, the schemes collapsed due to defaults in paying previous investors.

"Robbing new entrants to pay back the previous ones is being proved too easy in Bangladesh repeatedly. Even a silly fake story is trusted by people blinded by the lure of unusual gains," said fraud expert Major (retd)

Mohammad Shamsuzzoha, a fellow of the US Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

Both parts of the repeated scams are unfortunate, he said, blaming an extreme lack of proactive oversight of the financial and other intelligence agencies alongside a large number of people's blind greed and lack of minimum awareness.

Punishment of the scammers for the massive schemes also is insufficient in Bangladesh, which leads to the emergence of many new ones, he opined.

How OGS is fooling people

A month-long undercover investigation let TBS learn that, unlike the gigantic 2023 "robot-run trading" scam MTFE, where the fraudsters had channelled all the client funds abroad through illegal crypto means, OGS is not depositing the actual money to any real or dummy broker.

OGS pretends to be using the trading app of a Dubai-based unregulated broker called CentFx for their so-called trading. In fact, it is a mere shadow of the real markets, which means winning or losing in trading practically does not matter for OGS. Also, the modern shadow apps can show fake market prices.

However, large live trading screens of the shadow markets at some of the OGS offices do let the curious depositors feel "something exciting" into.

"Regulations in Bangladesh are outdated, and the brilliant youths always make their way," Anwar at the Paltan office said in a client convincing session when asked about the lawfulness of their claimed trading in the international markets.

OGS created a back-office IT platform for administering its operations that lets its trading clients see their account status, deposit more or withdraw.

The company, its owners, employees, and agents have accounts with many banks in the country. However, cash is the most preferred way for both them and most of the clients.

People come up with cash, and OGS teams "help" them by supposedly converting it into dollars at Tk127-130 rates and "depositing the dollars to trading accounts abroad".

Both the "trading accounts abroad" and the local back-office accounts are fake. Money is used to pay the previous investors' monthly profits and the agent commission.

"A classic example of a Ponzi scheme," said fraud expert Mohammad Shamsuzzoha.

The masterminds

Seven individuals in October 2022 formed OGS Bangladesh Limited, using the office address of Suite 702 on the sixth floor of Southland Center, Agrabad, Chattogram, according to the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms.

Many types of businesses they intended to pursue during company formation, except for the clandestine scheme.

With 7,500 shares, Md Monowar Hossain (Sojib) from Lakshmipur, whom everyone within the network knows as the trading genius, is the chairman of the company.

Md Saidul Islam from North Halishahar, Chattogram, is the managing director of the company with an equal share.

Chattogram's Md Nurunnabi is a director having 2,000 shares. With 2,000 shares each, the other four shareholders and directors are Md Mizanur Rahman from Noakhali, Abdul Hannan from Chattogram's Pahartali, Priyotosh

Chandra Das from Khagrachari's Mahalchhari, and Md Azharul Islam from Muradnagar of Cumilla.

Priyotosh Chandra Das claimed he signed all the documents to leave the company in December, and he was not a part of any trading fund collection story. However, his name is still in the company registrar.

Azharul, Abdul Hannan, and Sojib preferred outright denial of any involvement of their company with fund collection from the people, paying hefty monthly return and agent commission as this reporter talked to them as a journalist.

The managing director did not respond to calls for a comment.

Only Mizanur among the company owners admitted the clandestine operations claiming 35 offices and 25,000 clients.

If his claim is true, the company using the CentFx trading app might already have taken several hundred crore taka from investors, feared the experts, demanding an investigation by authorities concerned.