E-commerce company Neerapod’s CEO arrested

Police have recently arrested Shahriar Khan, chief executive officer of e-commerce site Neerapod.com, for allegedly embezzling customers' money.

Shahriar was arrested on Sunday from the capital's Shantinagar area during an operation by the organised crime investigation team of DB cyber and special crime unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), according to officials.

The operation was conducted following a joint shadow investigation into a case against him, filed by Ishtiaq Ahmed, a victim of his alleged scam, with Adabar Police Station under the Digital Security Act (DSA), DB Additional Commissioner of Police AKM Hafiz Akter told reporters on Tuesday.

Five computers, two laptops, two hard disks, 13 cheque books of different banks, 13 debit and credit cards, 23 SIM cards, and other documents used in the alleged scam were also seized from his custody during the operation, officials said.

According to Hafiz Akter, Shahriar opened neerapod.com in August 2020. He lured customers through various lucrative advertisements into making advance payments using the SSLCOMMERZ payment gateway.

Neerapod.com enticed customers with promises of giving home delivery of mobile phone sets, computers, laptops, refrigerators, ovens and other electronics items within 30 days at a 50pcdiscount.

Neerapod had got around 4,000 and they get about 12,000 orders in one month, adding about Tk7-8 crore in Shahriar's bank account, said Hafiz Akter, adding that most of those who ordered products are students and low paid employees.

Initially, he said, Neerapod delivered some products and asked customers to post positive reviews on its page to build trust among general customers. But as the number of orders and advance payments increased, they stopped delivering products. After a while, customers started to realise they were cheated and demanded redressal through various social and news media. At one point, the fraudster disappeared cutting off all communications with customers.

Currently, there are more than 2,000 website-based and about 1 lakh Facebook-based active e-commerce sites in Bangladesh.