The claim regarding actress Shaon’s bank statement is fake

Several posts have been shared on Facebook along with a bank statement bearing Standard Chartered’s logo, claiming it shows actress Meher Afroz Shaon gave Tk 20,000 each to nine cultural figures to create Facebook posts around the day of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination on August 15. But Dismislab’s fact-check shows the document is fake. Verification also found that the so-called account does not even exist and that the statement was created by editing a template found on the internet.

On August 15, multiple Facebook pages (1, 2, 3), groups (1, 2), and personal profiles (1, 2, 3, 4) posted a photo of a bank statement. The caption read, “On the occasion of August 15, Tk 20,000 for every post! Funding is from Meher Afroz Shaon. But Suman Anwar should not have made such a short post! He should have been paid Tk 1,000! A bucket of sympathy for those who made posts but did not get any money!” The same bank statement photo was also posted in a group called “Boishommobirodhi Chhatra Andolon”, which has more than 119,000 members. The caption of that post said, “Shaon has given Tk 20,000 each to these celebrities today to make posts.”

Analysis of the circulated document shows that it contains the name and logo of Standard Chartered Bank. It also contains the full name of actress Meher Afroz Shaon and an address. According to the document, on August 15, from Shaon’s Standard Chartered Bank account, transactions worth at least 20,000 each to the accounts of Neyamat Ullah Bhuiyan, Sumon Anwar, Irfan Sajjad, Srabonno Towhida, Nazifa Anjum Tushi, Saniya Sultana Liza, Mumtaheena Chowdhury, Sunerah Binte Kamal, and Khairul Basar. The total transaction shown was Tk 1,81,200.

Dismislab compared the circulated statement with the printed and online statements of two real account holders of the same bank, and found that the structure of the fake document did not match the authentic ones. 

Also, when other account holders of the same bank tried to transfer money to Shaon’s supposed account number (1223767545676) through the SC Mobile Banking app, the app asked for a correct account number. This shows that the account number in the document under Shaon’s name does not exist in reality.

For further verification, Dismislab conducted a reverse image search on the so-called bank document of Shaon. It was found that at least three template sites, Fake Template, Scribd.com, and SolutionInn, had almost identical sample bank documents. These websites usually publish various types of bank statement templates for graphic design practice. These types of templates are usually editable. Names, logos, account numbers, and addresses can all be edited as needed.

For example, when comparing the fake statement with a bank transaction document of Ukraine’s ‘A Bank’ available on Fake Template, the similarities were clear:

• In both, the bank’s name and logo are placed at the same spot on the page.
• In both, the page number is written as “1 of 1.”
• In both “Statement of Account,” “Account Number,” “Statement Date,” “Period Covered,” “Total Credit,” and “Number of Transactions” are written in the same place and in the same style.
• In both, under the transaction section, there are five columns for “Date,” “Description,” “Credit,” “Debit,” and “Balance,” with 27 rows below them. In both documents, the first nine rows contain transaction details.

From these similarities, it can be said that the circulated bank statement was created by editing a fake template taken from the internet. In the nine rows, the names of nine Bangladeshi celebrities were inserted, along with Shaon’s name and a Dhanmondi address, while copying the name and logo of Standard Chartered Bank.

Additionally, actress Sunerah Binte Kamal, who supposedly received Tk 20,000 from Shaon to her BRAC Bank Limited (BBL) account categorically said the statement is fake. In a post on August 15 from her verified Facebook profile, she said, “This account is spreading fake news. The editing isn’t even good. They claimed the bank issued the statement on a Friday! On top of that, poor editing. … At least they should have known our payment rate. I don’t even have an account in BBL.”

It is worth mentioning that on August 15, actress Sunerah shared a poem by poet Al Mahmud about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on her profile. Among the other eight celebrities listed in the same fake document, posts about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were found on the profiles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and pages (1, 2) of seven of them. By linking these people with Shaon, the fake document is being spread as if it were a real bank statement.

Disclaimer: The original version of this fact-check report was published in Bengali on Dismislab’s Bengali website on August 20, 2025. The English translation was completed later; however, to maintain time accuracy and avoid any potential misinterpretation, the English version has been published with the original publication date.