Rapid Action Battalion arrested a youth for alleged involvement in trading in the cryptocurrency, a virtual currency banned in Bangladesh, from Gazipur on Wednesday.
The arrested Raihan Hossain, 29, has been cheating people online and laundering money abroad.
A case was filed against him with Safipur police station in Gazipur under the Digital Security Act, said officials.
RAB-1 deputy director Gazi Ashiqur Rahman said that Raihan has been involved in financial scams since June last year. He has been maintaining communication with international fraud chains, especially, in Pakistan, Russian and Nigeria.
Police seized 22 SIM cards, 19 fake national identification cards as well as digital devices and bank cheque books used in the scams.
The RAB officer said that Raihan was mainly hacking credit cards of different users and buying cryptocurrencies.
He was monitoring bank transactions of different bank accounts and scammed around Tk 30 lakh from those accounts since last June, said Ashiqur.
Trading in cryptocurrency or virtual currency, such as Bitcoin, is illegal in Bangladesh,’ said a RAB officer, adding that transactions were still taking place online with those virtual currencies.
Transactions in such networks are done through cryptography, using secret codes which are difficult to break to extract information, he added.
In Bangladesh, cryptocurrencies are mostly used for gambling, especially during different mega sport tournaments, or to hide illegal wealth from the government.
Some are also involved in buying Bitcoins and selling them when their price increases.
Raihan sold Bitcoins and other forms of web money to particular customers.
RAB officers said that Raihan brought an expensive car valued over Tk 1 crore recently with the money earned through financial scams.