₹4.58 crore gone! Bank employee steals money from FD accounts of 41 customers, loses it all in stock market investments

A former employee of the ICICI Bank was arrested for allegedly siphoning off crores of rupees from accounts of customers in a fraud that spanned for more than two years.

According to media reports, Sakshi Gupta, a relationship manager of ICICI Bank in Kota defrauded around ₹4.58 crore from at least 41 customers in hopes of achieving high returns but ended up losing it all.

Gupta worked at the Shriram Nagar branch of the ICICI Bank in the DCM area of Kota city between 2020 and 2023. She was arrested by the Udhyog Nagar police on May 31 after a detailed investigation, according to a report by The Times of India.

How a bank employee siphoned off ₹4.58 crore from customers

Sakshi Gupta, according to investigators, accessed more than 110 accounts of 41 customers between 2020 and 2023 by misusing the ‘User FD (Fixed Deposit)’ and conducted a series of illegal transactions.

As per the probe, the ICICI Bank employee used these funds to invest in the stock market in hopes of getting good returns in a short period of time.

The fraud continued for over two years without customers realising that their money was being withdrawn.

However, Gupta's dreams did not go as planned as she suffered heavy losses at the stock market, losing the money and eventually failing to deposit it back to the customers' accounts.

In order to conceal the fraud, she changed the numbers linked to the accounts so that customers did not find out about the transactions.

“She linked the phone numbers of her family members to these accounts and withdrew more than ₹4 crore. She even devised a system that she used to get the OTPs on her system so that the account holders don't get a whiff of the fraud,” sub-inspector Ibrahim Khan of Udhyog Nagar police station was quoted as saying by NDTV.

Khan further said that Gupta used the account of an elderly woman and passed ₹3 crore through it without her knowledge.

“She systematically transferred funds, sometimes using the account of an elderly woman who had no knowledge of the activity as a pool account. By mid-February 2023, over ₹3 crore had passed through that single account,” the police officer was quoted as saying by TOI.

The case came into light only when a customer came to the bank to ask about his FD account. The bank then filed a report with the police on February 18.

ICICI Bank settles claims, suspends employee

Acknowledging the case, ICICI Bank in a statement said they filed an FIR with the police ‘immediately’ upon discovering the scam.

“The interest of our customers are of paramount importance to us. Immediately upon discovering the fraudulent activity, we filed an FIR with the police," a spokesperson told LiveMint.

The bank has suspended Gupta and settled the claims of impacted customers, it said.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy against any fraudulent activity and thus suspended the employee involved. We would like to reassure that genuine claims of impacted customers have been settled.”