Rs 4.58 crore stolen from ICICI bank customers: Broke FDs, created overdraft and personal loan; how lady relationship manager executed fraud

Time of India

11 hours ago

Such was the addiction of stock market trading that a 26-year-old girl working as an
ICICI Bank
relationship manager stole Rs 4.58 crore from innocent customers of the bank to do speculative investments in stock market futures and options (F&O). This young girl, did not even leave her family members as she took money from her father-in-law as well to trade in the stock market F&O.
Kota,
Rajasthan
Police SP has revealed to us that most of these customers from whose accounts she stole the money to fuel her stock market ambitions were senior citizens who were not so tech savvy. The police also revealed that she covered her tracks and digital footprint so well that even her colleagues and the branch manager could not catch a whiff of it. It was the bank's internal audit team who managed to crack this scam and expose it.
As soon as the
ICICI Bank
's audit team flagged this scam, the bank's branch manager filed a FIR case against her accusing of running this elaborate scam. Based on this FIR she was arrested by Udyog Nagar police station, Kota, Rajasthan on May 31, 2025 at her sister's wedding. The charge-sheet is yet to be filed and police said it will be done once the full investigation is over.
How did this 26-year-old girl manage to loot Rs 4.58 crore without anybody noticing?
Dilip Saini, Additional Superintendent of Police (SP), Kota, Rajasthan told
ET Wealth Online
that, 'She is now 26 years old and this crime was committed by her from 2020 to 2023 i.e. during her period of employment with ICICI Bank. Our police investigation has revealed that she used multiple stock broking websites and apps like ICICI Direct, Zerodha (Kite), to trade in the derivative segment (Future and Options).'
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When asked how no customer of the bank noticed this scam which she ran for three years, Saini told: "She even changed the mobile number of customers to her own close relative's numbers so that they don't know about these transactions.' As the OTPs and alerts never reached the real account holders and these customers never checked their bank balance also, it was made easy for her to run this scam.
When the Rajasthan Police interrogated her, she revealed that most of these illegal and unauthorised transactions were done by her through the
ICICI Bank
's Insta Kiosk and digital banking channels. The police investigation found that she changed entries in the bank's internal software to hide her activities.
Also read:
ICICI Bank branch manager duped depositors of crores for years to meet targets
She used a pool account to gather all the money she stole by prematurely broke FDs, created overdrafts and even created personal loans in customer's name
She withdrew funds from FD accounts by prematurely breaking them, created overdrafts, and even took personal loans in innocent customer's names, without any of them knowing or authorising it.
Saini said: "Investigation also revealed that she used a third party's account as a pool account to collect all the money she took out by prematurely withdrawing the FDs, creating overdrafts (ODs) and even personal loans in the customer's name.'
She used ICICI Bank customer's online FD website to prematurely break fixed deposits belonging to 31 customers and transferred Rs 1.35 crore into unauthorised accounts. She also took out a personal loan of Rs 3.4 lakh in someone else's name and executed transactions through digital platforms such as Insta Kiosk, ATM, and internet banking — even using debit cards of four unsuspecting customers.
A pool account is an account where all the collected money from the other FD, OD, loan accounts are deposited in a single place and from here she then transfers the money to her demat account. This method saved her time, as managing money from 40 or so bank accounts is more difficult than doing it from one single account.
Saini explained: 'Moreover, our investigation also revealed that she even took money from her father-in-law and invested that in the stock market. It seems from our investigation that despite losing money in the stock market trades, she used to invest more and more money by taking it from innocent customers' different types of bank accounts (FD, OD, etc).'
ICICI Bank's audit team exposed this scam
Saini said: 'This scam that she used to run during her employment (2020-2023) was brought to our notice by the ICICI Bank branch manager who in turn was informed by the bank's internal audit team. Although we arrested her, but we believe such a small age girl could not have managed to conduct this scam alone, there must be other accomplices. We are still investigating. We have traced all the affected bank customers and found most of them were senior citizens who are not so tech savvy and merely invested in FDs and other banking products.'
An ICICI Bank spokesperson said, 'The interest of our customers are of paramount importance to us. Immediately upon discovering the fraudulent activity, we filed an FIR with the police. 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.'