Tuesday 8 June 2010

Operations Risk - Royal Bank of Scotland loses £93,000 in simple cash deposit scam

A businessman conned the Royal Bank of Scotland out of £93,000 in a absurdly simple scam that exploited the bank's cash envelope deposit system.

Senthuran Gopalakrishnan was jailed for one-year for the fraud in which he pretended to deposit £155,000 over an eight-day period, when in fact he had only banked £62,000. The bank's Fast Cash deposit system required customers to place the cash in a sealed envelope and write down the total on the cover. This sum was immediately credited to customer accounts.

At a hearing, Gopalakrishnan admitted that between 29 June and 6 July last year he deposited a number of envelopes which contained inflated details of the amounts of cash inside, netting a cool £93,000 windfall.

The fraud was only uncovered five days later when a different department counted the actual sums in the envelopes. The £93,000 excess withdrawn by Gopalakrishnan was never recovered.

The bank says it has since changed the system.
 
Website Statistics mortgage payment calculator