(The Daily Star) -- Want to earn easy money? Just find someone who thinks their partner is cheating on them, then claim to be a "Genie King" or "Dervish Baba," and offer solutions to "relationship problems" for a fee.
Bag crores of taka from the suspecting partner and disappear into the wind.
It may sound outlandish, but that's exactly what a group of fraudsters did to a retired nursing supervisor. She is also the wife of a noted physician in Dhaka.
Having doubts about her husband's faithfulness, she stumbled across an ad on Facebook in 2022, promising supernatural solutions for marital issues.
Desperate for help, she reached out and was soon speaking to a man introducing himself as "Quadir Al Jilani." He claimed to be a former imam from a prominent Madina mosque and a spiritual healer now based at a madrasa in Chattogram.
The man referred to her as "Maa," he assured her that the answers she sought could be hers if she is ready to pay.
The woman first paid Tk 9,000 through a mobile financial service. Over time, she spent Tk 5.86 crore in total, which drained her savings and more.
She cashed in her retirement benefits, mortgaged her gold, and even borrowed from family to meet the gang's constant demands.
To lend credibility, the fraudsters used voice-changing software to impersonate an actual "genie," a female fairy, and a 200-year-old "Dervish Baba". The elaborate setup was convincing enough to dupe the victim; she genuinely believed she was communicating with supernatural entities.
And so, when they told her the "work" was almost done but needed more funding to complete, she complied without question.
Each time they asked for cash, they warned her to keep everything confidential, claiming that any disclosure would "break the magic".
If she hesitated, they intimidated her with threatening voices.
This strange, coercive ritual continued for a year.
Tanjil Ahmed, a fraudster, splurged on a Honda Vezel and a Suzuki motorcycle with the money, while another Md Hashem, bought an 850 sq ft apartment in Mirpur and built a two-storey home in his village with the money.
Both from Bhola's Lalmohon and Borhanuddin upazilas, the two fraudsters enjoyed a life of luxury at her expense, even dabbling in online gambling and business ventures.
But when she finally began to demand her money back, they turned hostile, warning her to keep quiet.
The gang dismantled their fraudulent setup, deleting their Facebook profiles, discarding SIM cards, and abandoning the "Dervish Baba" identity they had crafted.
This information came to light when the woman filed a case with Mohammadpur Police Station on September 3 last year.
Following that, Criminal Investigation Department submitted a charge sheet to a Dhaka court on October 8.
The charge sheet also finds the involvement of Hasnain alias Hasan, an employee at Tanjil's office in Dhaka's Uttara.
They were arrested in September last year.
Tanjil and Hashem secured bail from the High Court after spending seven to eight months in jail, while Hasan was granted bail four months after his arrest.
Regarding the matter, a CID official said, "Social media users must be aware of these exploiting gangs."
After police submitted the charge sheet, the matter now rests with the court.
