CBI books jewel appraiser, aide for cheating bank of Rs 1 crore

The bank has lost nearly Rs 1 crore because of the fraudulent acts by the two, identified as V Senthil (44), a jewel appraiser in Canara Bank’s branch in Theni branch, and his assistant V Vinod (36).

The fraud happened in just a year between March 1, 2017, and April 15, 2018, said the CBI, which has booked the duo for criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust and cheating, following a direction from the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court.

According to the agency, Senthil and Vinod had allegedly replaced 26 packets of gold jewels that were pledged at the bank with spurious jewels.

Also, in some cases, there was a huge variation between the loan amount mentioned in the jewel loan application forms and the loan amount credited to the SB account of the borrowers. The amount credited was approximately 10 times of the sanctioned amount. In the process, the bank lost Rs 64.56 lakh.

According to the CBI, the accused had removed gold ornaments from 15 jewel packets pertaining to different customers and opened fictitious loan accounts in the name of various persons, causing wrongful loss of Rs 24.85 lakh to the bank.

They had also replaced some portion of the gold ornaments with spurious gold in two packets causing loss of Rs 1.79 lakh. Apart from this, the duo was also accused of giving quality certificate for inferior quality jewels in connivance with customer on three packets causing loss of Rs 4 lakh to the bank. The two had also accused of stealing jewel packets causing loss of another Rs 2.92 lakh to the bank.

The total loss to the bank was pegged at Rs 98.12 lakh. In its FIR, the CBI said that the two had committed offences of criminal conspiracy, fraud, forgery, theft, cheating, breach of trust, impersonation, wrongful gain, falsification of documents and misappropriation of bank money.