fraud
A plastics company has approached the Banking Adjudicator over a dispute it has with its bank after the payment of a fraudulent cheque David Le Page A Free State company is battling to recover R116 000 paid out from its account by Standard Bank to First National Bank (FNB), after the latter honoured a completely fraudulent cheque. The Free State company in question, Vesco Plastics wrote a cheque in February for R116 000 payable to the South African Revenue Services in Welkom. The cheque was deposited in the receiver’s own official box by a Vesco employee, along with two other cheques, both of which were received. The first inkling Vesco had that any fraud had taken place was when the company received notice that the receiver was fining it for late payment of their taxes. The cheque had obviously gone missing. Whether it was diverted within the receiver’s office or stolen from the deposit box cannot be determined. The receiver has waived the late payment penalty, but was not available for further comment on the matter. Subsequently, it emerged that the information on the Vesco cheque was used to create a forged cheque, on the strength of which FNB paid out R116 000 to Giant Cash and Carry in Botshabelo. Despite requests, Standard Bank has not supplied Vesco with a copy of the forged cheque better than one faxed to them. The original appears too have disappeared. >From the faxed copy, it is clear it is smaller than the original, carried no company logo, is made out in a different handwriting to Giant Cash and Carry and signed differently. However, the account and other numbers on the bottom of the cheque, the amount and the date are all identical.
The original cheque was somehow returned to Standard Bank, with an Absa Klerksdorp stamp – apparently forged, as Absa never paid any money on it. Standard returned the cheque to Vesco. Initially when notified of the fraud, Standard Bank returned the R116 000 to Vesco. However, it subsequently reversed that decision, saying “a drawee bank cannot be faulted where it merely debits its customer’s account with a [correctly drawn] cheque”.
Vesco’s Dr Jean Leger met with Standard Bank forensic department head Charles Whyte last week. Whyte told Leger the bank is prepared to fight the case all the way to the high court. According to Leger, Whyte did make a settlement offer. Leger declined the offer, feeling it did not address the issues at stake. Whyte declined to give the Mail & Guardian comment on the matter, but does say that it’s part of a “highly complex fraud”. FNB refers to the cheque as being “fabricated”, but says: “In every other respect nothing appears to the teller that would cause further investigation. It is simply impossible to telephone counter party banks to verify whether their client wishes to proceed with payment as thousands of transactions like this occur every day.” Leger feels that Standard Bank is essentially refusing to challenge FNB over its paying out the forged cheque and, in doing so, failing in their role as Vesco’s agents in the matter. “I don’t believe their forensics department has applied their minds to the matter,” he said.
“They’re saying they’ll honour any piece of paper FNB chooses to pay out on. By not challenging the transaction, they’re essentially turning a blind eye to certain kinds of fraud.” Leger believes Standard Bank is hoping Vesco will consider R116 000 too small an amount to litigate over. He has approached the Banking Adjudicator (formerly the Ombudsman) over the matter, but that office does not deal with disputes involving companies with turnover greater than R3- million.
Vesco have managed to evade two prior attempts at fraud this year, with the help of Standard Bank, which in the first instance returned R25E000 drawn on fraudulent cheques cashed in the Free State.
In the second instance, a cheque made out to a staff member was intercepted and altered to become a cash cheque. The bank phoned Leger for authorisation – but the call was intercepted by someone who purported to be Leger. Only the fact that the teller was familiar with Leger’s voice and smelled a rat prevented the fraud from being successful.