Rajkot: Cashier siphons off Rs 71 lakh from cooperative bank

RAJKOT: A cashier of Rajkot District Cooperative Bank was booked for allegedly siphoning off Rs 71 lakh from accounts of the bank’s customers between December 2021 and June 2022.
Accused Vikas Lakhani, cashier at the bank’s Vadodar branch of Dhoraji, was booked based on the complaint filed by the bank authorities with the Patanvav police station. The charges against Lakhani include cheating and forgery. Police said that Lakhani not only forged the customer’s signatures on cheques, but also forged the signature of the bank manager to clear the cheques.
The fraud was exposed when the manager at the Dhoraji branch got a call from a customer complaining that Rs 3 lakh was withdrawn from his account without his knowledge. He came to know about the transaction when he updated his passbook at the branch.
The FIR stated that after the customer’s complaint, bank’s senior officials verified the account transactions and found that in February Lakhani first deleted the customer’s mobile number from the CIF (customer information file) so that he does not get an SMS alert of withdrawal. Lakhani forged the customer’s signature on a cheque and withdrew the money. He also cleared the cheque from the branch by again forging the signature of the branch manager.
Another technique that Lakhani used was to make an entry of deposit in a customer’s passbook but delete it from the bank's records and keep the money with him, said police.