Hyderabad: Cash firm staff had hand in ATM scam

HYDERABAD: Investigations uncovered a larger plot involving those running RCI Cash Managing Services themselves, after two employees fled last week with over Rs 9.98 crore. The money had been given to the two for refilling ATM machines of various banks in the city. It is learnt the two were traced and Rs 1 crore was recovered.

Police said Sunday that they found that some of those managing the cash distribution firm and some employees were engaged in siphoning off bank funds. The RCI faced a financial crisis and could not pay salaries to staff. It found a way out of the situation by encouraging its staff to siphon off small sums. That led to some of the employees misappropriating larger sums, police said.

The racket came to light only a couple of days ago, when it was found that two employees — Lokeshwar Reddy and Praveen Kumar — did not report back to office and were not responding to calls. A complaint was lodged with Tukaramgate police by the company’s operations manager G. Nagaraju after it was found that the two were missing along with over Rs 9 crore.

The police traced the cellphones of the two employees to Lakdika-pul on Saturday afternoon. Then the phones went off the radar. North Zone DCP Prakash Reddy said the case was being transferred to Central Crime Station (CCS).

During investigations, police found that the RCI management had directed employees to divert funds to pay staff salaries. Though this was going on for the past few months, it did not come out, as regular audits were not done.

“Though banks insisted on regular audits, RCI postponed it citing inconvenience to customers. However, they maintained records showing cash being filled in ATMs, and made sure that the machines did not go empty,” said a  police official. The modus operandi was to rotate the amount collected by different custodians among others for covering up the fraud. Police found out the role of the management and staff during the probe.