Fraud by a customer to the Banker, Banking - Finance

[Banker India]

Sir

I'm a cashier working in a bank.

A customer came for cash withdrawal instead of debiting the account, I, by mistake, credited the account. Now, customer has taken physical cash from the branch. Seeing more balance in the account, the customer made withdrawals using UPI and ATM.

I informed the customer immediately when I found the cash difference on the same day.

Now, it has been 3 months and the customer has not deposited a single penny.

FIR was not lodged as the customer kept on asking some more days and then weeks and now we have realised that it's quite late to lodge an FIR.

The customer is maintaining accounts in 2 different banks and one account in another bank as second holder.

What action can I take now to recover the money?

The amount involved is more than ₹50,000.

Posts / Replies

[Deepak Bubna]

Hello,

Your query is incomplete. Did you inform your senior officials about the matter ? Is branch manager aware about it ? Cash deposit cannot take place without customer verification - In case of cash deposited through ATM, without logging in with debit card number and ATM pin and in case of deposit at the counter, without pay-in-slip duly signed by the customer and acknowledged with stamp by the teller. In absence of any of these, the customer cannot prove that the cash was actually deposited by him/her and bank has all the powers to freeze the account for any debit until this wrong entry of credit is recovered. Banks also block the amount which gets credited out of any error.

[Banker India]

I had informed the branch manager not on the same day as he was on leave for a month. I informed him about a week later on phone, when recovery seemed tough (now it seems impossible).

But, all the other staff in the branch knew it from day one.

Actually cash was withdrawn, but it was posted in the system as cash deposit and erroneously passed by the officer also.

Hold was created on the same day. We even did a partial recovery of 70,000 by debiting the account. Rs. 55,000 is still pending. This cash shortage of ₹55,000 was paid by me on the same day.

Due to having different accounts in three more different banks, he stopped using the account in our bank.

The customer is threatening why I did partial withdrawal. What options do I have now to recover the money?

[Deepak Bubna]

You may take up the matter, with the help of branch manager, with other banks. What happened by you was out of oversight but the customer acting up and instead of realizing the mistake, threatening the bank officials will only go against him since he does not have any proof that he deposited this amount in his account. Some officials from RBI can be of help too. You made up for the shortfall on the same day and brought this matter in knowledge of other officials, so you are clean. Bank may take some internal disciplinary action against you, subject to branch manager's discretion. You may also think about raising a police complaint against this customer taking help of branch officials since this is not something that happened between you and the customer in personal capacity . It happened while you are discharging official duty on behalf of the bank and branch officials should come forward in your support, in my opinion. Once that happens, customer will fall in line I am sure

[Banker India]

Sir

Yes, the bank will first go for investigation against me.

Now, after three months, are we in a position to go for FIR as we are ourselves under suspicion? Why have we not reported officially earlier.

In one account in which he made UPI withdrawals (₹25,000) using this erroneous money, he is second holder in that account. Can we request for hold in that account as he is not first holder but second holder? How much hold should we request from that bank?

How much hold amount should we request from other two banks?

There seems one more problem: the branch manager is not willing to send email/letter to other bank, so other bank will not create a hold at all.

Only option I feel is self report it to circle office, then bank will do enquiry against me and the branch will lodge FIR and the branch will request hold on the other bank accounts.

[KASTURI SETHI]

If this is the situation, have you tried to solve the matter amicably through the introducer ?