BKC bank duped of Rs 85 lakh in DD scam

The Bandra Kurla Complex police are on the lookout for unidentified accused persons who duped a reputed private bank to the tune of Rs 85 lakhs. The fraud was being committed for over a year and it came to light only when the bank was summing up the balance sheet for the financial year 2018-19.

According to the police, between February 23 last year and March 20 this year, the Standard Chartered's BKC branch had issued several demand drafts (DD) payments in the names of private small-scale accounts. When the bank officials were tallying the year's expenses and revenue, they realised that a huge amount sent through DD payments were missing.

After an internal investigation was conducted, the bank officials learnt that over 1231 DDs issued between February 23, 2018, and March 2019 were misappropriated. A further investigation revealed the DDs, which were sent by a courier service, Overnight Courier Limited, never reached their destined small savings group accounts.

The manager of Standard Chartered bank's BKC branch, Shirish Kumar Goyal, approached the BKC police on March 20 and registered a complaint against unknown persons. Kalpana Gadekar, a senior police inspector of BKC police station, said, "The unknown accused had misappropriated 1231 DDs worth Rs 85 lakhs, endorsed them in a private bank and withdrew the money in small amounts to avert suspicion. We are tracking all the DDs issued since February 2018 and suspect an employee of the bank or the courier service to be involved in the case."