(Representational image)The plot of a financial crime thriller might have prompted Nabarun Majumder to take advantage of his access as the chief manager of the credit card payments section. Majumder, who was arrested in December 2018 for allegedly swindling Rs 3 crore at the Reay Road branch of the Union Bank of India (UBI), told police that he was “inspired” by a novel, The Bankster, by author Ravi Subramanian.
Police said Majumder rigged the limit of the four credit cards he had held with the bank to Rs 18 lakh and used them to make transactions worth Rs 2.84 crore. When it came to making payments, Majumder would edit the payment file and add his name to the list of people who had paid their dues.
The alleged fraud went on from 2012 to 2018 till one of the top managers of the bank found that four cards were making payments way above their credit limit.
An officer, during the course of interrogation, asked Majumder why he committed the fraud despite earning a decent salary. “He told us that a major section of the book is centred around a bank where some employees connive with criminals to rig the system and fraudulently transfer money. As he too was a bank employee and in a similar position as some of the characters in the book, he started thinking that he too could use it to his advantage,” said a police officer linked to the investigation.
“Majumder first used one credit card and raised its limit and rigged the system to show he had made payments. When that worked out, he signed up for three more credit cards and kept using them fraudulently to make more such transactions while not making a single payment,” further said the officer.
