Bank clerk from Kerala who siphoned off Rs 8 crore arrested

BENGALURU: A fraudster from Kerala who allegedly siphoned off over Rs 8 crore from fixed deposit and other accounts of various customers of a Canara Bank branch in the neighbouring state was nabbed on Sunday night. A Kerala police team picked him up from a flat in HSR Layout where he was holed up since February-end.
His order on a food app led investigators to his hidedout, sources said.Suspect Vijeesh Varghese, 36, a former Indian Navy personnel, was a clerk with the bank's Pathanamthitta branch in Kerala. His fraudulent acts at work came to light on February 11, 2021 when a colleague whose wife had a fixed deposit with the branch found out Rs 9.6 lakh had been withdrawn.
Suspecting Varghese's hand, the bank authorities launched an internal probe and found he had swindled a whopping Rs 8,13,64,539 from dormant FD accounts and bank accounts belonging to minors, to which court orders had banned access till the persons turn 18. But Varghese had fled with his family by then.
"Due to lapses on the part of his colleagues, Varghese managed to access their work computers and altered customer details to transfer large sums of money December 28, 2019 onwards for the next 14 months," said an investigator.
Rented house in B'luru with fake identity
Varghese, along with his wife and two children, reached Bengaluru on February 27 and rented a flat on a fake identity, Vikash Kumar. He remained in hiding after disposing of his old sim and bank cards to avoid detection by Pathanamthitta police who were on his trail.
"He had transferred the money to various accounts belonging to himself, his wife, mother and father-in-law. He used a big chunk of it to invest in the stock market and for online card games like Rummy," the officer added.
Managing to stay off police radar for nearly three months, Varghese erred when he used his newly purchased Bengaluru number to call a friend in Kollam, his hometown. A Kerala police team tracked him to a location in Indiranagar and landed in Bengaluru on Thursday. The investigators then tracked the number to a food order and followed it to reach his flat - where he was hiding with his family - at 8pm on Sunday.
The team took him by road to Pathanamthitta on Monday. He is being quizzed on the money trail and is likely to be remanded in judicial custody on Tuesday, police sources said.