Post by Sapphire Capital on Jul 12, 2008 23:05:04 GMT 4
CHENNAI: Be in touch with your bank if you have made a fixed deposit. Fraudsters may get a duplicate of your fixed deposit receipt and take loans in your name. What is more worrying, some bank employees are hand in glove with the tricksters who avail loans after showing the fixed deposit as surety.
The bank fraud wing of the Central Crime Branch came across this new method when they investigated a cheating case at ING Vysya Bank’s Valasarawalkam branch recently. In this branch alone, seven fraudulent loans, amounting to Rs 5.63 crore, were taken by duplicating FD receipts of non-resident Indians. None of the depositors realised that they have been duped with the connivance of the bank manager and loans had been taken in their name.
"The fraud came to light during the bank audit and bank manager Roop Chand filed a complaint with us. On investigation, we found that C Satish, another manager in the same branch helped M Suresh Kumar (38), a private company owner, and T Arivarasu (42), a dentist, to avail seven loans using the fixed deposit receipts of NRIs.
We arrested all the three," Paneer Selvam, assistant commissioner, bank fraud wing of CCB, told The Times Of India.
He said it was the first time the agency had came across this method. "So far we have come across frauds where forged property documents were used as mortgage. When the banks insisted on registering the mortgage to prevent the customer from availing another loan using the same mortgage documents, the fraudsters were forced to change their modus operandi," the official said.
According to officials, a good percentage of the loan was paid to the bank manager for his help. "When someone makes a fixed deposit, the bank is supposed to issue only one deposit receipt. However, Satish took two receipts, gave one to the original depositor and the other to the fraudsters. Both Suresh Kumar and Arivarasu used these receipts to avail the loans," the official said.
The original depositors came to know about this only when bank sent them notices for non-repayment of loans. "In this case, the bank authorities realised that the fraud was committed with the connivance of the bank’s own official. So they avoided the embarrassment of contacting the depositors seeking explanation for non-repayment of loans," another official said.
The bank fraud wing of the Central Crime Branch came across this new method when they investigated a cheating case at ING Vysya Bank’s Valasarawalkam branch recently. In this branch alone, seven fraudulent loans, amounting to Rs 5.63 crore, were taken by duplicating FD receipts of non-resident Indians. None of the depositors realised that they have been duped with the connivance of the bank manager and loans had been taken in their name.
"The fraud came to light during the bank audit and bank manager Roop Chand filed a complaint with us. On investigation, we found that C Satish, another manager in the same branch helped M Suresh Kumar (38), a private company owner, and T Arivarasu (42), a dentist, to avail seven loans using the fixed deposit receipts of NRIs.
We arrested all the three," Paneer Selvam, assistant commissioner, bank fraud wing of CCB, told The Times Of India.
He said it was the first time the agency had came across this method. "So far we have come across frauds where forged property documents were used as mortgage. When the banks insisted on registering the mortgage to prevent the customer from availing another loan using the same mortgage documents, the fraudsters were forced to change their modus operandi," the official said.
According to officials, a good percentage of the loan was paid to the bank manager for his help. "When someone makes a fixed deposit, the bank is supposed to issue only one deposit receipt. However, Satish took two receipts, gave one to the original depositor and the other to the fraudsters. Both Suresh Kumar and Arivarasu used these receipts to avail the loans," the official said.
The original depositors came to know about this only when bank sent them notices for non-repayment of loans. "In this case, the bank authorities realised that the fraud was committed with the connivance of the bank’s own official. So they avoided the embarrassment of contacting the depositors seeking explanation for non-repayment of loans," another official said.