Suspects defrauding Saudis arrested

Accused spoke Arabic fluently and pretended to be bank representatives

CHAK JHUMRA:

The FIA Cyber Crime team arrested five suspects of an alleged gang who cleaned up bank accounts of some Saudi nationals using the Arabic language and seized counterfeit material from them and registered a case against them.

Circle in charge of the FIA Cyber Crime, Syed Arshad Ali Rizvi, was informed that some people pretended to be representatives of a bank in the form of a group, using the Arabic language with fake phone numbers, resembling the bank's helpline, and obtained bank account details and passwords and other information from various Saudi and Pakistani citizens and got access to their accounts through internet banking.

They allegedly fraudulently transferred their savings to another account and withdrew money.

Shoaib Riaz, Assistant Director of FIA Cyber Crime, arrested five accused of the gang, Muhammad Shafiq, Saleem, Ahmed Siraj, Akhtar Ali and Aslam, and seized the counterfeit material from them and registered a case and started an investigation.

According to FIA Cyber Crime Circle in charge Syed Arshad Ali Rizvi, the accused were fluent in Arabic. Using this skill, they used to rob the citizens of Saudi Arabia by pretending to be a representative of a bank.

The suspects had been remanded into FIA custody for five days.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 19^th, 2022.