The fraud part 3

 Read part 1 part 2

Anu looked up at Ravi again waving her mobile at him beckoning him to pick up her call. The phone rang for several seconds but Ravi seemed oblivious to its ringing. He simply looked at Anu and smiled. She grew tired of his smiles and it seemed odd and stupid. Why was he not picking up her call? She wanted to walk up to him and ask him what was so funny and why he had not got the last transaction of Mr. Mehta verified, but the crowd of customers waiting outside her counter had her glued to her seat.  

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Ten days ago, Mr. Mehta had come to the bank to change some foreign currency. He had arrived in India with his wife and son a month ago and had planned to go to Kerala for a week’s stay before they returned back to Qatar. They would be travelling from Trivandrum directly and not coming back to Mumbai. Anu smiled at the opportunity and went through her rehearsed routine of mismatched signatures and new cheque. After Mr. Mehta had left she checked his account and was pleasantly surprised to see 12 lakhs in his account. ‘ I’ll transfer the entire amount after about 10 days,’ she thought, ‘anyway this is our last time here and I do not want any goof ups.’ And she had kept the cheque carefully with her. Today, it was almost ten days since she had been holding the cheque. She assumed the family would have left for Qatar and made the transfer entry using Kavita’s id and passed on the cheque to Ravi for verification.

 And here Ravi was sitting on the goldmine without acting on it. Didn’t he realize it would take her a long time to withdraw the entire amount in parts and deposit it into the other account? She didn’t want to be caught at this stage when everything had happened so smoothly without any suspicions or enquiries.

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There had been a few glitches here and there, but Ravi had always taken care of it as he promised. The office boy, Yoga, had been the first to smell that something was amiss. Yoga had been filing the daily vouchers for cash receipt and withdrawls when he casually mentioned to Ravi over lunch that some of the employees were not putting their initials properly on certain high value cheques, and the mandatory letters for withdrawl of large sums were also missing. He wanted to report it to the branch manager. Ravi had convinced him to stay away from it and had assured Yoga that he himself would report it to the BM. Within a few days Ravi misplaced some important files on purpose and framed Yoga resulting in his expulsion from the branch. Of course Yoga never suspected Ravi was behind his termination.

Neetu, a new joinee had once observed Anu making entrees from another employee’s id and had pointed out that it was not ethical. Soon enough, she was committing errors with even simple transactions and was directly in the line of fire. Shortly she was shifted to a bigger branch to learn the process under senior colleagues.

Rohit was another colleague who had chanced upon Anu putting his initials on a cheque and had mentioned it to Ravi. He didn’t seem threatening, but Ravi paid an old friend who was into gang wars and the like, to injure Rohit in a bike accident. Rohit was out of action for almost 6 months and yet to return back to the office. He would surely have forgotten about it by the time he came back.

Anyone who had the slightest doubt were always ‘taken care of’ by Ravi.  But of late, harmless incidents had been giving way to serious ones. Anu had been averse to causing bodily harm to anyone. We don’t want anyone’s blood on our hands, she had pleaded. Ravi had assured her it would not happen again.

Unfortunately, Sheenu the girl in charge of account opening had an eye on them since the day Sanghamitra Ghosh’s account had been opened. She had wondered why the old lady had needed two accounts when managing one was painful for her. She had quietly been keeping track of the transactions happening in the account with the help of a friend in another branch of the bank. She had initially been aghast to learn of the huge amount of money coming in and moving out of the account. She now had a full inventory of the fraud happening in the account and knew who was committing it but she did not have proof against the two. It was purely by luck that Ravi chanced upon her diary and realized their game would be up soon. He had therefore decided to quit and go to Dubai with Anu before it was too late.

She had to be taken care of soon.

 read concluding part

The Fraud part 2

Read part 1 here

Mr. Kannan sat across the desk waiting for the transaction to be completed.  Anu diligently tapped away at the keyboard before she looked up and frowned.

“Sir, I am sorry but your signatures do not match. Can you please sign a new cheque leaf?”

“Oh, is it? I have not used this account for almost 4 years now; I have forgotten how I have signed. Can you please help me?”

“Sure sir, but first can I ask you some verification questions?”

Mr. Kannan nodded. She proceeded with the usual questions, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, ID proof etc and then smiled satisfied with the answers.

“Sir, let me show you how you have signed.” She turned the monitor to face the customer so that he could see his signature in the computer.

“Yeah I remember now, there’s not much of a difference but thanks for your help Ms. Anu. I’ll be happy to sign again.”

“Sir could you kindly use a fresh cheque leaf, overwriting is not allowed. I’ll destroy this one.”

She tore a cheque leaf and threw it in the dustbin. Simultaneously she deactivated the mobile alert in his account. He would not receive alerts for any transaction henceforth.

The transaction was completed and Mr. Kannan got up to leave, satisfied.

“When will you be back sir?” she asked innocently.

“I am leaving tomorrow and I guess it will be another 4 years before I can come back to India again.” he smiled.

“If you need any help with your account, you can call me anytime sir, I’ll be glad to help.” She offered her contact number.

After Mr. Kannan left, she checked his account to see the balance. ‘Six lakhs!’ she beamed. She saw that he had never used this account for any transactions while he was out of the country. He had just used it in case he needed cash during his visit to India. She filled the amount in the cheque leaf he had signed a moment earlier. The cheque leaf she had pretended to destroy but had destroyed one of her own instead. She tucked it into her purse and smiled. She transferred the amount two days later into her fake account. Then she withdrew the money in parts and deposited it in an account with another bank.

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Mr. Kannan had been her first victim and it would a long time before he found out about the fraud and complained. Any which way, she could never be implicated in the fraud. Ravi had ensured that both of them were never officially involved in the transactions. Every transaction had needed to be entered by an employee of the officer grade and verified by a senior officer. Ravi had ensured that he had got the transactions verified using his colleagues id’s and password and Anu had ensured to do the same.  They never used their own id’s for the transactions lest their fraud be caught in the future. They had carried out this routine several times in the past eight months. They had accumulated a huge sum of money and this would be the very last transaction before they quit their job in the bank.

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 Read part 3

The fraud part 1

Anu sat at her desk impatiently tapping the table with her pen. She had checked her account for the umpteenth time since morning and there was no sign of any money being transferred to the account. She glanced at Ravi to see what he was doing. Ravi was not only her colleague in the bank she worked with but also her boy friend and the love of her life. The one she had dreamt of marrying soon. He looked up at her and smiled. She wondered what he was smiling at. She tried to check if he still had the cheque in his possession. His table looked empty. She had done her job making the entry in the system and passed on the cheque to him, but no money could be transferred till Ravi verified the transaction.

‘It is a high value transaction sweetheart, hurry up, 12 lakhs is no joke’ she tried to convey with her lovely kohl lined eyes.

She wondered what was taking him so long.  She and Ravi had decided to quit the job at the Lakshmi Cooperative Bank later this week and move to Dubai. They would get married and live life “King Size” as Ravi would often say. They had accumulated quite a huge sum of money in their account and it would be enough for a long long time. She picked up her mobile and dialed Ravi’s number.

‘Pick up the phone Ravi...’

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Eight months ago Mrs. Sanghamitra Ghosh had walked into her branch balancing herself precariously on her walking stick. She was very fond of Anu, who had always helped her with a smile. She met the branch manager and told him she was too weak to come to the branch for transactions and requested him to assign a person to help her so that she could conduct her transactions sitting at home. The manager saw that the lady had quite a good balance in her account. Her son who lived abroad had been depositing money into the account every month and she had been receiving some rental income too. He agreed to upgrade her account to a premier account so that someone could be assigned to help her with her transactions. She insisted on Anu being assigned to help her as she had been comfortable dealing with her. Anu was sent to her house the next day to collect some documents.

That is when Anu hit upon a devious plan. She not only collected the documents and signatures for upgrading the customer’s account but also original ID and address proof required to open a new account. The old lady did not suspect a thing and neither did the people at the bank. A new account was opened in the name of Sanghamitra Ghosh with all valid documents. One, which the poor lady had no inkling of and Anu was free to operate it as her own. The lady’s signatures were always scrawled indecipherably and the manager had been generous to pass her cheques whether her signatures had matched or not. It was easy for Anu to copy the signatures and by the end of one month she had become quite a pro. She marveled how she could sign better than the old lady. When the cheque book and debit cards had arrived for the new account, Anu had collected them from her branch to deliver it to the lady, but never did. No one had suspected anything because Anu had been religiously serving the customer for quite some time, depositing her cheques, withdrawing cash for her, filling out her forms, and carrying out any transaction that the lady might require help with.

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read part 2

The heart and the head

`twas a war that shattered my peace,
and rocked me off my bed,
the never ending battle,
between the heart and the head.

the head asserting its views,
rationale galore it fires,
motive just to convince,
like lawyers or like liars,

the heart pure in its motive,
transparent, no hidden ill,
advice bitter yet remedial,
the proverbial pill.

caught in the crossfire,
struggling to comprehend,
who`d win the duel,
when the strife would end.

if the heart reigns supreme,
love would coat the pain,
and if it is the head,
suffering may conceal the gain.

though the final outcome,
the thrifty mind can cognise,
yet each time the dilemma,
never fails to arise.

Abduction - concluding part

Read part 1, part 2 here

As soon as Aarzoo called her uncle, he immediately contacted AT&T to track the mobile. They would then use Google street view finder to know the exact address. They had very little time before they abductors found out that the cards and jewels were fake. Manek had to be traced before that. As soon as Aarzoo had messaged him the number, the tracking of the mobile had begun. The GPS system started showing movement and his team prepared for an ambush.

They followed the navigator and after about half an hour, they spotted the guy in the peon’s clothes as described by Aarzoo. The peon was riding a moped with a bag slung across his shoulders. The 3 police jeeps turned off their lights and moved very slowly. After a few more minutes he seemed to have reached his destination. He parked the moped under a tree and walked. They were surprised that the abductors had not traveled far outside the city. Radhekrishna parked his jeep about 200 meters away from the place and decided to walk so as not to alert the abductors. They were just on the outskirts of the city in an isolated ground surrounded by banyan trees and still inside the SUV.

His team of 12 followed and the remaining 6 stayed in the 3 jeeps.  He spotted Manek’s SUV with the lights turned on. He could make out 7 people sitting in the SUV. 5 of them were masked; one was in the driving seat and one blindfolded. ‘That must be Manek’ he thought. Manek had to be safely brought out before they attacked the others or else they could kill Manek. He wondered what weapons they had. He signaled his team to wait till the time was right. He wanted the driver to get off for some reason so that they couldn’t drive away when attacked.

They had been patiently waiting for more than an hour when 6 of them including the driver got off to relieve themselves. The driver was heading straight in his direction. Good. His men dispersed in two’s in the directions the other abductors had gone. As the driver neared him, he swiftly placed one hand on the driver’s mouth and shot him point blank before the driver could even realize that he had been attacked. He dropped dead at Radhe’s feet. He would have preferred to catch the guy alive, but he didn’t want to risk the guy raising an alarm.

‘One down, five to go’ he cheered himself. He wondered how his team was doing. There were silencers in everyone’s revolvers so he would not hear any gun shots. He saw the lone tall guy in the SUV with Manek, peeping out of the window. As if on impulse he fired a shot that hit the guy on his forehead startling Manek.

‘Two down’ he counted. He hoped Manek would realize that help was around and not do anything stupid. He waited 5...10...15… minutes had elapsed and not a single sound heard. What were his men up to? He pressed a little buzzer in his pocket that sent signals to all his men that Manek was alone in the car. Suddenly he heard gun shots in all directions. One of his men came running to him and informed him that two of the abductors had been killed and only two left now. They had spotted one of the policemen and fired at him. He had been injured in the left arm. The guy in the peon’s uniform who had collected the bag was running away from the place and the other was running towards the SUV. Radhe ran towards him and distracted the abductor so that he would not harm Manek. Radhe aimed for his thigh and shot him. He fell writhing in pain and was finally caught. He wanted someone alive to know why Manek had been abducted. His team managed to catch the other one firing at his feet.

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Manek’s driver was later found gagged and bundled semiconscious in the boot. When questioned, the remaining two abductors revealed that they had planned to kidnap Manek and get him to draw money from his ATM and also gather all the jewels in his house. They had thought it would be better to kidnap Manek instead of his wife or children, because they would be defenseless in his absence. It had been their first attempt at kidnapping, and they had not expected a woman to be so smart and level headed in times of a crisis!

Manek beamed with pride at his wife who had shown a remarkable presence of mind. Had she not intercepted his message and alerted the police, he could have been a dead man today. Mobile tracking had virtually been the abductors undoing. If things hadn’t moved as quickly as it had! He shuddered to think of the outcome.

It was almost 7 in the morning.

“Ready to board your flight jaan?” he asked her with a smile.

“Hmm…but only the flight of fantasy”, she replied with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

                                                    

                                                            *****concluded*****