Bank executive siphons ₹67 lakh from elderly woman’s accounts, booked

Bank executive Reshma Mandal has been accused of cheating senior citizen Martha Monteiro of over ₹67 lakh while acting as her relationship manager.

Police on Monday booked a Bank executive for allegedly cheating a senior citizen of more than ₹67 lakh while acting as her relationship manager.

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Sadly, the family of Martha Monteiro, 80, discovered the fraud when they wanted to foot her hospital bill in April, but there was no sufficient balance in either of her three accounts, a complaint filed at Bandra police station said.

According to her son Ralph Monteiro, who is also the complainant, his brothers are abroad while his mother lives at Pali Hill Road and a domestic help stays in the house to look after her. “Being elderly, she wouldn’t do all her banking activities herself or visit the bank often. Therefore, the bank had in October 2019 appointed Reshma Mandal as her relationship manager.”

Thereafter, Mandal would visit his mother’s home frequently to hand over the money for daily expenses and towards the salary of the house help, Ralph said. “After winning Martha’s trust, Mandal would do all the bank transactions on her client’s behalf. She would also withdraw money using the woman’s ATM cards.”

When Martha fell ill and was admitted to a hospital in Bandra West in April, Ralph found that he could not withdraw money from her accounts to foot the bill, a police officer said. “She thought there was some technical issue with her accounts and asked Ralph to pay the hospital bill.”

As per the complaint, Ralph knew that a huge amount of money was put into his mother’s account after his father Basil Monteiro died in 2019. “He then started looking into the history of transactions made from his mother’s three accounts and found several transfers that his mother was not aware of. He also found that Mandal held all passwords to internet banking and even the ATM cards of his mother’s accounts,” the officer said.

In all, ₹67,20,333 were transferred to other accounts between February 21, 2022, and February 4, 2023, the complainant said.

Police officials said when Ralph confronted Mandal, she admitted that she had made the said transactions.

A comment from the bank was awaited at the time of going to press.

A case against Mandal under section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code was registered, police said.