Former ANZ employee to stand trial in million dollar fraud case

A former ANZ Bank employee will be tried for allegedly falsifying customers’ signatures and misappropriating over VND91.3 billion ($4 million). Ho Chi Minh prosecutors have submitted to the court an indictment against Nguyen Pham Gia Tho, a former employee of ANZ, and his sister-in-law Nguyen Tuong Vi, director of an agricultural product export/import company, for appropriating property through fraud.

According to the indictment, in 2015, Tho was head of customer relations at ANZ’s South Saigon branch in District 7 and was tasked with mobilizing savings deposits, providing insurance sales advice and proposing mortgages.

During his time, he allegedly falsified signatures of customers with saving accounts to register for internet banking service and then transferred their money into his or his relatives’ accounts. Specifically, in early 2016, Tho was asked by a customer named Mai to help manage her bonds worth VND3 billion ($130,000) with securities firm VPBS. Abusing her trust, he falsified six contracts to mortgage the bonds and secure loans from VPBS.

Tho asked his mother to impersonate Mai and register for internet banking service, then transferred the VND3 billion to her account so that he could withdraw from it. In July 2017, to have money for a fruit trading business with his sister-in-law Vi, Tho falsified signatures of several ANZ customers to open joint bank accounts in their names and one of his relatives.

He then falsified documents to secure loans from the bank for the joint accounts before appropriating the money by transferring them into Vi’s and his own accounts. In total, Tho was determined to have misappropriated a total of VND91.3 billion (nearly $4 million), with Vi an accomplice in the misappropriation of over VND80 billion of this money. The relatives of Tho and Vi, whose identities were used to open the joint accounts, will not be prosecuted as investigators concluded they were unaware of the fraud and did not benefit from it.