COIMBATORE: As if taken from a Hollywood thriller heist script, a private bank’s manager from Tirupur stole jewels in his custody in Kerala, replaced them with fake ones and pledged them in Tamil Nadu to earn crores.

When Kerala cops arrested the kingpin Jayakumar (34) from Coimbatore on Friday, they recovered 4.25 kg of gold jewels pledged in a private bank in Tirupur. The manager of a national bank apparently began his fraudulent activity when he as a manager in a nationalised bank in Kozhikode. He was later shifted to another branch in July this year.

A new bank officer, Irshad, who assumed charge in the Kozhikode branch, discovered that the jewels pledged by the public were replaced with imitation jewels during an audit. Based on his complaint, the police nabbed Jayakumar, who confessed to having pledged the siphoned jewels in a private bank in Tirupur with the help of his friend Karthik, who works in the gold loan section of the bank.

Inquiries revealed that Jayakumar had received Rs 2.5 crore by pledging 4.25 kg of jewels in the private bank in the name of 17 persons. The Kerala police recovered the jewels from the bank, while a search is on for Karthik who is on the run.