Fraud when applying for a loan by a bank employee
You can you imagine that when you make a bank loan a person is able to become a victim of fraud? Hard enough. Deception can be systemic, in the standard contracts offered to all clients, previously imperceptible conditions could have been included that increase the amount of loan payments. Now the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is closely monitoring the prevention of such situations. Nevertheless, there are cases of such fraud in practice, and bank employees are the culprits.
Reasons for fraud
Oddly enough, most often the victims of their employees are the lending institutions themselves. Retail lending banks with hundreds and thousands of branches have limited staff choices. Recent schoolchildren, former accountants, and sometimes people with a criminal past are hired to obtain loans. They do not have the necessary experience and competence, therefore they often enter into agreements with borrowers who are obviously unable to repay the debt. The administration of banks expects that the scoring program will not make mistakes, which automatically determines the client's solvency by answering the questions posed, and does not take into account the human factor, which is carried by bank employees. But the documents - income certificates, documents on the ownership of property - are looked at by people, and sometimes they do not see a fake. And sometimes they themselves can enter into an agreement with the client, having issued a loan, which he would not have received if he had turned to another employee. Of course, such activities are rewarded. And if in the case of citizens the amounts of both loans and bribes are small, then for legal entities the amount of loans is millions, and the remuneration of a corrupt employee sometimes reaches 10-20% of the amount of funds received.
Typology of credit fraud
Fraudulent crimes must contain two main features. The purpose of their commission should be the appropriation of other people's money and property, and the method of committing them should be deception or abuse of trust. Speaking specifically about frauds related to applying for or obtaining a loan, they fall into two groups based on the criterion of the victim, that is, committed against a credit institution or against a bank client.
In both cases, the perpetrator is an authorized employee or official of the bank. The bank suffers damage in the form of the loan amount not repaid in a timely manner, and the client, citizen, company or entrepreneur either turns out to owe a significantly larger amount than planned, or lose the mortgaged property, or simply become victims of a controlled bankruptcy when their property goes to the disposal of banking structures for next to nothing ... Almost any client who does not pay enough attention to the terms of the contracts he concludes can become a victim of scammers. Early demand, huge fines for delays, requirements for the introduction of bank employees into the borrower's management bodies - all this can significantly worsen his financial situation.
Bank fraud
The main way to steal bank funds is to conclude a loan agreement on the basis of inaccurate documents. Fake income statements, balance sheets, documents of ownership of property mislead the credit institution with respect to the actual solvency of the borrower. The following groups of this type of fraud can be distinguished, often impossible without the connivance of a bank employee:
- registration of a loan for a third party passport, lost or stolen. Sometimes a person applying for a loan uses make-up on purpose to match his appearance with the person whose photograph is pasted into the document;
- distortion of the data provided in such a way that the contract is invalid. In the future, it can be recognized as such in court and not to pay interest and other commissions. The amount of the principal debt will have to be returned in any case. In the same way, a loan received for someone else's passport can be challenged, but the advantage of this is that the person who actually received the money turns out to be unidentified, and they are not subject to return;
- the creation of a legal entity specifically for processing a loan for it with its subsequent withdrawal to shell companies and cashing out. Now this mechanism is used less often, banks require borrowers to be active for at least three years and submit financial statements;
- falsification of the financial statements of a legal entity in such a way as not only to obtain borrowed funds, but to do so on the most favorable terms. At the same time, the bank does not see the actual financial indicators of the company, and its sudden insolvency is a revelation for it;
- withdrawal of assets, both pledged and simply ensuring the operation of the company. In this case, the bank cannot satisfy its claims at the expense of the borrower's property.
Most of these actions can qualify for criminal law. In 2012, Article 159.1 was introduced in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which speaks of fraud in the field of lending. It is important that most of the above methods of deceiving banks are impossible without the active complicity of their employees.
Criminal acts targeting formal borrowers
Consumer lending is carried out for small amounts, and when it is issued, there is no need to submit numerous documents. This creates a wide field for fraud, when money is received with the registration of a loan agreement for the passport of a third party, a citizen who does not even know that his documents are being used. The following types of use of dummies and other people's documents are widespread:
- a person without work, a permanent source of income, but with a valid passport and no damaged credit history is involved as a borrower. The amount of funds received is divided between him and the organizer of the scheme. It is impossible to collect a debt from such a citizen;
- the passport is stolen from the citizen, a new photo is pasted into it. The fact that a person owes a certain amount to the bank, he does not immediately find out and is forced to fight off creditors. Such situations indicate that in case of loss or theft of documents, it is necessary to immediately report to the police, then there is no responsibility;
- fraud becomes the work of a bank employee who issues a loan on the basis of a copy of the questionnaire of one of the previous borrowers, an application for a loan and a photocopy of his passport or on a person who simply has a debit card in this bank;
- the data of a potential borrower is obtained by fraudsters when registering a store's discount card, and on the basis of the questionnaire, a credit card with a small limit is obtained. The scheme is also unrealizable without the complicity of a bank employee;
- when applying for a loan online and obtaining a credit card, the data of someone else's passport can also be used.
The mechanisms are widespread enough. Most often, they are sold in the regional branches of large retail banks. The control of the security service in the field is often weakened, since the fraudsters receive small amounts, such loan agreements are much less controlled than those related to large amounts.
How banks cheat
Banking institutions are also not always fair in relation to the borrower. In a loan agreement, you can often find hidden commissions and additional payments that the client is not informed about. Thus, some banks force the client to conclude a life and health insurance contract with their captive insurance companies when applying for a loan. The amount of the payment - the insurance premium - is not paid by the client of the bank independently, but is paid by the credit institution under collective insurance agreements. It increases the amount of debt, and interest is paid on the insurance premium. At the same time, early repayment of the loan does not make it possible to return the proportional amount of the insurance premium. The central bank gives the opportunity to terminate such an imposed insurance contract within 14 days after the conclusion and return the money, but not everyone knows about the existence of this possibility.
Forcing to conclude such insurance contracts is not a fraud in the literal sense, but the client loses significant amounts that supplement the income of banking and insurance groups. There is an opportunity to influence bankers by writing an application to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and asking them to check the correctness of the actions of the bank that hid the actual cost of the loan. In special cases, this tactic turns out to be effective.
Features of the investigation and consideration of cases of this kind in courts
Most of the frauds committed by bank employees when applying for a loan are investigated with significant procedural difficulties. It is extremely difficult to establish the fact of their commission in the absence of documents or evidence. Not all bank offices are equipped with video surveillance cameras, which could indicate the direction of the search for the culprit.
A person whose documents were used for fraudulent purposes also finds himself in a difficult situation. Law enforcement agencies cannot always identify the real culprit, and the injured citizen is forced to fight off creditors. When faced with such a situation, professionals advise the victim to perform the following sequence of actions:
- obtain from the creditor bank a copy of the loan agreement and all attachments to it. A signature made by another person during a graphological examination will be a good argument in favor of the victim;
- further, relying on the data of the agreement, send a claim to the address of the banking institution, setting out all the objective arguments for which the particular person was not the recipient of the loan funds;
- the claim and a copy of the contract with a forged signature will become sufficient grounds for applying to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in order to verify the fact of the crime by an unidentified person;
- to send a claim to the court for the recognition of the loan agreement as invalid on the basis of the lack of legal capacity of the subject.
It is important that in the lawsuit it is possible to demand that the bank be charged not only for the payment of handwriting examination, but also compensation for moral damage associated with constant calls from collection agencies, pressure and blackmail. But it is extremely difficult to convince the court that the loan was taken by another person. The Bank will make every effort to conceal the mistakes of its employees. Close cooperation with law enforcement agencies, detection of recurrence of fraud, use of all available types of evidence is required. A citizen is not yet fully protected from aggressive actions of bankers, and he needs to use the entire arsenal of available ways to protect his rights.
08.12.2020
