Former bank employees siphon off money from dead man's account

CHENNAI: A former employee of a nationalised bank in Madhavaram was apprehended by police officials on Wednesday night after it was found that he and an associate, also a former employee in the bank, had forged signatures and made off with Rs four lakh from the account of a deceased person.
Mohammed Aslam (40) was arrested at his residence in Manali by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) suburban police for stealing a total of Rs 7.7 lakh from the accounts of four customers in the bank.Police said that his accomplice Arun Kumar was absconding.
In August 2008, a complaint was filed by Narayanan Sekar, manager of the bank, with the police, stating that money was found missing from many of the bank's customer accounts. Sekar alleged in his complaint that he suspected employees of the bank to have carried out the fraud.
Investigations revealed that Aslam and Kumar had acted in tandem to loot money. Police found more than Rs four lakh withdrawn after December 2007 from the account of Iyyappan, a man who had died a month earlier. Similarly, they found money illegally withdrawn from the accounts of three other customers. Bank officials had sacked both men for poor performance, much before the loss of money was discovered. The CCB investigation was focussed on internal fraud and it paid dividends.
A senior official dealing with bank frauds at CCB told TOI that the modus operandi employed by the two was one of many used to siphon money from banks. "Even though cases of employees of banks being directly involved in fraud is a rarity, there are instances being reported. These men had carried out the theft presuming that the deceased man's kin would not come to withdraw cash from his account," the official said.
Narrating other tricks that were usually employed, the official referred to a case in 2008 in which a computer terminal operator in a nationalised bank located in Ashok Nagar had looted customers' money amounting to more than Rs 15 lakh by creating fictitious accounts and transferring funds into that account. "In another instance, a custodial officer in charge of depositing cash into the automated teller machine (ATM) had run away with the money instead of depositing it," he added.
Bank officers say that extra vigilance on the part of senior management and periodic checks would help reduce such fraud. sibi.arasu@timesgroup.com