Bank employee embezzles 246 SJC gold bars.

The investigating agency has recommended prosecuting suspect Nguyen Van Linh (born in 1986, a bank treasury officer) for the crime of embezzlement. According to the investigation's conclusion, the centralized treasury at TPBank's Head Office (HUB HO) stores assets including gold, cash, valuable documents, important collateral, etc. Regarding gold, the vault is divided into three categories for management purposes.

Accordingly, TPBank accepts SJC and DOJI gold for safekeeping with a fee, including keeping the gold with the original serial number (when returned, the gold will be returned in its original condition) and keeping it without a serial number (when returned, the full quantity held will be received back).

Regarding gold transactions, TPBank stores and uses SJC gold for buying and selling transactions with customers. For pledged gold (as collateral): TPBank lends money to customers using SJC gold bars as collateral. After receiving the gold as collateral, it is sealed according to TPBank's regulations and stored in the vault.

Gold for trading and gold held in custody is inventoried daily by the warehouse management and periodically on June 30th and December 31st each year.

Illustration photo: Chi Hung

Around 2017, Nguyen Van Linh was a cashier and a member of the Treasury Management Board at the TPBank Head Office Transaction Center. Linh noticed that the gold pledged in the vault showed little fluctuation, customers pledging gold had clear settlement and maturity dates recorded in the management ledger, and the counting of this type of asset only took place twice a year and was announced in advance.

Therefore, Linh conceived the idea of ​​stealing gold from the vault (stored in a safe for buying, selling, and safekeeping) and then using the gold from the safe as collateral to replace the shortage, thereby deceiving the daily inventory checks.

Sophisticated gold theft

Based on the records, Linh determined that a customer named C. had mortgaged 246 SJC gold bars, but the transaction was only settled on paper, and the gold was stored permanently in the vault. Linh then planned to steal the gold from the gold trading vault and replace it with the gold that Mr. C. had mortgaged.

On July 5, 2017, after completing the day's gold inventory, taking advantage of the negligence of other members of the warehouse management team, Linh took 246 SJC gold bars from the safe containing "gold for sale and safekeeping," put them in a plastic bag, and placed them in a metal container.

On the morning of July 6, 2017, during the process of opening the vault to replenish the cash reserves for the branches, Linh brought out a metal container holding 246 SJC gold bars and placed it in the buffer storage area (an area outside the main vault where access to and from the buffer storage area is not managed or supervised).

Late in the morning, taking advantage of the time when the vault staff were replenishing cash at the ATM, Linh entered the vault and stole 246 SJC gold bars. She then sold the 246 gold bars for over 8.8 billion VND. The suspect deposited all of this money into her securities account.

By the end of the workday on July 6, 2017, during the inventory process with the Warehouse and Treasury Management Board, Linh placed a bag containing 246 taels of gold belonging to Mr. C. into the gold safe under the "buying, selling, and safekeeping" scheme to replace the gold ledger that Linh had taken. Therefore, for a long period, other members of the Warehouse Management Board did not detect the missing assets.

By March 22, 2019, Mr. C. had settled his loan and received the full 246 taels of gold from TPBank. To further avoid detection of the missing gold, Linh cut the seal on the gold bag belonging to DOJI Company, which was kept in the vault, took out 246 taels of SJC gold, and then placed it in the bank's gold trading safe.

By January 15, 2021, an additional 561 SJC gold bars had appeared in the vault managed by Linh, which served as collateral for a bank loan taken out by Ms. H.

Realizing that using Ms. H.'s pledged gold to offset the 246 SJC gold bars she had stolen was safer, Linh took the metal box containing Ms. H.'s pledged gold out of the vault, broke the lock, withdrew 246 SJC gold bars, packaged, sealed, and placed them in the gold safe under the pretext of "buying, selling, and safekeeping." The remaining gold was stored in a metal box in the "safekeeping vault."

By August 9, 2023, Linh had returned 561 taels of gold pledged to Ms. H. into the vault. After Ms. H. settled the debt, there was no other suitable amount of gold in the vault to replace the 246 taels of gold that had been embezzled. Unable to return the gold, Linh turned herself in.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/nhan-vien-ngan-hang-tham-o-246-luong-vang-sjc-2333066.html