A rogue banker who forged a customer's signature in order to swipe hundreds of thousands of dirhams from his account has been hit with a six-month prison sentence.
The Emirati worker altered 25 cash withdrawal documents from May, 2017 to January of last year to fraudulantly obtain Dh306,000.
The string of crimes only came to light on January 15 of last year when a bank teller became suspicious about a financial transaction involving the defendant, 35, and the victim.
“He submitted this client’s request and told me the client was waiting in the main hall. it was surprising because this specific client would only have the chief teller handle all his requests,” said the worker in evidence.
CCTV footage from the bank in Dubai proved that the client was not present.
“We sensed something was suspicious therefore we revised all requests for this client and discovered that there were many of them, the client didn’t make,” said the employee.
The bank launched its own internal investigation, with the worker admitting the series of frauds when confronted.
He was charged with forgery, use of forged documents, fraudulently obtaining money that belongs to others, only to enter not guilty pleas at Dubai Criminal Court last March.
He was convicted of all counts at a hearing on Thursday and sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of Dh306,000.
The court heard that the victim is now deceased.
The defendant has two weeks to appeal his sentence.