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Private bank marketing agent in police net

Staff Reporter

He siphoned off customers' money using their passwords

CHENNAI: The city police have arrested a marketing agent of a private bank on charges of siphoning off money from the accounts of several customers using their passwords and cheques.

On a complaint from Srinivasan of Vyasarpadi, sleuths of the Central Crime Branch took into custody Umesh Raj, who ran an agency that enrolled account holders and processed loan documents.

He opened an account with the bank under a false name and transferred the money of his clients to that account, S. Balu, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Cyber Crime Cell, said.

He opened sealed envelopes to know the passwords of his clients. Sometimes he would call up the clients and ask them their Internet banking passwords.

Some of the account holders gave him the passwords unsuspectingly, Mr. Balu said.

Cheques collected

Umesh Raj also collected cheques from some account holders who applied for loans, keeping the payee's column blank.

The police recovered about 30 cheque leaves from him, a majority of which were blank cheques.

Mr. Balu said the offence came to light when Mr. Srinivasan noticed about Rs. 45,000 missing from his account.

The bank personnel said the amount was transferred to the account of one Karthikeyan.

On enquiry, it was found that Mr. Karthikeyan did not have an account with the bank.

From the bank documents, the photograph of the account holder was retrieved and was found to be that of the marketing agent.

Account holders identified

Though the CCB was yet to establish the extent of such transactions, it had identified four other account holders who lost money from their accounts mysteriously.

The `fake' accounts opened by Umesh Raj were found in the loop of transactions between these accounts. He sometimes operated from an Internet browsing centre in Guindy, Mr. Balu said.

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