In order to support his real-life gambling and betting addiction, a Kotak Mahindra Bank branch manager embezzled over Rs 31 crore from the Bihar government’s bank account. He laundered the stolen money to foreign countries to gamble and place bets via South Africa and the Philippines based gaming apps. To cover up his illegal activity, he opened 21 accounts by mis-using the Aadhaar and KYC details of many Kotak Mahindra Bank customers. In these accounts, illegal betting money was deposited.

When the fraud was discovered, the police filed their own case against the branch manager in 2021 and Kotak Mahindra Bank fired him. He was taken to the local court and is now out on bail. However, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigated the money laundering angle and found that he used to launder the stolen money using entities based in foreign countries and shared the details with Bihar Police in 2025. Hence a second case was filed by Bihar Police on June 27, 2025.

Read on to know the details of how he ran this scam for years and duped the public exchequer and misused the bank’s customer details.

Manavjit Singh Dhillon, IPS and DIG of Economic Offences Unit (EOU), Bihar Police told ET Wealth Online: “This branch manager used the cheque cloning fraud. He forged the signature of the cheques issued in the name of the Bihar government’s District Land Acquisition Officer (DLAO) and encashed them. Since the branch manager was the top authority to determine whether the signature on the cheques matched with the sample signature, it became difficult to catch this fraud. He did this for about two years and stole about Rs 31.93 crore and these betting/gambling apps where he invested this money are banned in India.”

When Dhillon was asked why nobody noticed this bank fraud for years, he said that this branch manager did not invest this money in the betting/gambling apps in his name. “He used customer’s KYC information (Aadhaar, etc) to open an account in their name; hence if anybody was at risk of being flagged for scrutiny by the government agencies it was the customers not the branch manager. The bank’s customers had no knowledge about their identities being used in such a fraudulent way. We are investigating how many customers are affected by this.”

The branch manager used money mules’ accounts to launder money and escape government scrutiny. He provided incentives to several individuals for using their bank accounts, UPI IDs, and other means to send and receive the stolen money ensuring that his identity remains protected if any government agency investigates these transactions.

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Last Friday (June 27, 2025), another case was registered against this branch manager. Dhillon from EOU, Bihar Police said, the ED along with the police is looking into this scam because of the money laundering angle.

Dhillon said: “Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 only ED can investigate money laundering cases, so we (Bihar Police) shared the case’s details with ED. The ED then registered an ECIR (similar to FIR) against this branch manager and began its investigation.”

Dhillon added: “The branch manager laundered the stolen funds to foreign countries and then invested in the betting apps in South Africa and Philippines. So while the police filed their own case (2021) against the branch manager, ED investigated the money laundering angle and have now shared its details with Bihar Police since we were the first government agency to investigate this scam. Under the law if an agency discovers any cognizable offence committed in the same case then it can register another case. Hence the reason why another case has been registered now on Friday against this branch manager.”

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Dhillon said the fraud came to light in 2021 when someone named Shubham Kumar Gupta tried to make an unauthorised RTGS transfer using the forged signature of the district land acquisition officer (DLAO). One of the bank’s employees, who was a sub-ordinate of the branch manager, suspected some fraud with this RTGS transfer and directly reached out to the DLAO.

Dhillon said: “He was caught on the spot.”

The DLAO confirmed that he never made any RTGS request like that. Soon after this discovery, an investigation was launched, leading to the arrest of the branch manager. Kotak Mahindra Bank fired him after learning of this activity. He was taken to local court and is now out on bail.

Dhillon says: “Internal enquiry by the bank revealed that the branch manager was withdrawing money from the account without the DLAO’s permission and he himself signed it and approved. Consequently he was terminated, and a case was filed at the Gandhi Maidan Police Station in Patna. In 2021, ED found that he used to launder the stolen funds using entities based in South Africa and Philippines.”

We approached Kotak Mahindra Bank to get their views on this issue however we are yet to receive any response from the bank.