Thane: Three held for Rs 6.92 cr fraud in cooperative bank

Thane: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Thane police has arrested three persons in connection with the alleged fraud worth over Rs 6 crore in a cooperative bank here, police said on Friday. 

Based on a complaint by one of the senior officials of the bank regarding the fraud of Rs 6.92 crore at its branch in Lok Puram area here, the police arrested two of the bank's employees and a customer yesterday, a police official said.

In November last year, seven persons, including six employees of the cooperative bank, had been booked for allegedly defrauding customers and the bank.

An FIR in this regard was registered with the Chitalsar police and later the case transferred to the EOW for further probe, the official said.

According to the complaint, the accused allegedly tampered with the bank's computer systems and receipts of depositors and diverted funds from their accounts to a particular account to facilitate benefit of cash credit (short-term loan) to its holder.

They also allegedly opened a number of new accounts without following regulations and diverted funds deposited in them to one particular account. The account holder, who got benefit from the cash credit, which was beyond his eligibility, failed to repay the loan, thus cheating the bank and its customers, police said.

The accused were booked under IPC sections pertaining to cheating, forgery, dishonest misappropriation of property, criminal breach of trust, falsification of accounts and also provisions of the IT Act, 
one of them related to hacking of computer system, police added.