Shocking information on the prevalence of cloned and fake mobile phones in Bangladesh has surfaced following the launch of the National Equipment Identity Register (NEIR), said Faiz Ahmed Taiyeb, Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser in charge of the Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministry.

In a post shared on his verified Facebook account on Friday night, Taiyeb revealed that millions of fake and duplicate IMEI numbers are currently active on mobile networks across the country.

“Millions of fake IMEI numbers are present on the network, such as ‘1111111111111’, ‘0000000000000’, ‘9999999999999’ and similar patterns. However, at this stage, we are not blocking these IMEIs,” he wrote.

He noted that a large number of citizens are using low-quality counterfeit phones that have never undergone radiation tests, Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) testing or other essential safety checks. These devices remain widely operational across all four mobile operators’ networks.

The government, he said, does not want to take any steps that could cause inconvenience to the public. “These phones will not be shut down; instead, they will be tagged as ‘grey’,” he added.

Highlighting the scale of the issue, Taiyeb said that over the last 10 years, a single IMEI number—99999999999999—was found to be associated with 39.12 million different combinations of Document ID, MSISDN and IMEI. Such IMEIs may belong not only to smartphones but also to various Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

He explained that mobile operators cannot currently distinguish between IMEIs used in mobile handsets, SIM-enabled devices and IoT equipment. For instance, devices like CCTV cameras may have been imported using the same IMEI. “We have started tagging legally imported IoT devices separately,” he said.

An analysis of top duplicated IMEI numbers shows staggering figures. About 1.95 million devices were found using the same IMEI number—440015202000—while around 1.76 million devices shared IMEI 35227301738634. Another 1.52 million devices used IMEI 35275101952326. Even a single-digit ‘0’ as an IMEI was found active on 586,331 devices.

Taiyeb said the government had long suspected a widespread presence of cloned and counterfeit phones, but the depth of the problem was not fully understood until now.

Citing a 2024 Bangladesh Bank report, he said 73 percent of digital fraud occurs through unregistered devices. Joint data from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) and mobile financial service (MFS) providers show that 85 percent of e-KYC fraud in 2023 involved illegal or reprogrammed handsets.

In the same year, around 180,000 phone thefts were officially reported, though several hundred thousand more likely went unreported. Most of the stolen phones were never recovered, he added.

Terming the sale of counterfeit phones under the guise of unofficial new devices as an unprecedented form of fraud, Taiyeb stressed that urgent action is needed to rein it in.