Masterminded by Ribhav Rishi, branch manager of IDFC First Bank, Sector 32, Chandigarh, the Rs 657-crore bank scam story is full of instances where the banks failed to check forgery and fraudulent transactions.
According to the CBI's investigation papers, the accused bank officials, including Ribhav Rishi and relationship manager Abhay Kumar, along with four others, resorted to forged debit notes and cheques bearing forged signatures, as well as unauthorised debits without any cheque. Such transactions were processed and approved through the bank's internal "Maker- Checker" workflow; the bank officials induced the banking system to act upon forged instruments. Even call confirmation with authorised signatories of the government bank accounts turned out to be a farce. There was no call recording by banks.
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To present the fraudulent transactions as genuine, the accused bank officials prepared forged fixed deposit receipts (FDRs), bank account statements and interest certificates and submitted them to government departments. They altered the mobile numbers and email IDs linked to the bank accounts in the account-opening forms and in banking records, and subsequently substituted them with those they controlled and operated.
For instance, Rs 50 crore was debited from the IDFC First Bank account of the Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited on May 5, 2025, through Cheque No. 3. However, this cheque was never issued by HPGCL. Maker Anuj Kaushal and Checker Seema Dhiman are accused in the scam, while mastermind Ribhav Rishi conducted the call verification. They allowed the fraud without a cheque. The call was made for some other purpose.
Another transfer of Rs 5 crore was made on May 19, 2025. The bank failed to produce Cheque No. 9 on the basis of which the transaction was made. As the fund was transferred through the bank's General Ledger, no SMS alert was sent to the authorised signatory due to a technical fault in IDFC First Bank's system.
In a case involving a Rs 25 crore debit from HPGCL Pension Fund Trust account in AU Small Finance Bank via a cheque made on December 29, 2025, the branch manager of the bank's Mohali, Charanjit Singh Randhawa, allegedly made the call confirmation through the mobile phone of Abhay Kumar, another mastermind of the scam. It was Abhay Kumar who had brought the cheque. The cheque bore only the authorised signatories' signatures; Randhawa filled in the body of the cheque, including the amount, date and beneficiary's name. The amount went to Swastik Desh Projects, a firm floated by the accused for siphoning off the funds. The call detail record (CDR) did not log any record of a call between Abhay Kumar and Balwant Singh, Senior Accounts Officer of HPGCL, whose number was linked with the account. Balwant Singh later committed suicide and levelled allegations against a co-accused.
Another example of lapses on the bank's end is of a Rs 10-crore fraudulent debit from the Haryana State Agriculture Marketing Board's account at IDFC First Bank on January 14, 2026. Area head Shamim Dar, an accused in the case, claimed to have made the call confirmation, but as per the SOP of the bank, a branch operation staff member, such as the branch manager, or the maker or checker, should have made the call. As the funds were first transferred to the bank's General Ledger, no SMS alert was generated due to a technical fault of IDFC First Bank. These funds were then transferred to two shell entities.
For high-value transactions, approval was to be obtained from the cluster head, regional head, zonal head and country head depending on the value, as per the bank's SOP. It turned out that Ribhav Rishi forged emails to his seniors to make it appear that transactions had been approved by country head Sachin Mehta, zonal head Vishesh Soni, regional head Dhirendera Pratap Singh and cluster head Harjot Singh Gill, for debits from the Haryana School Shiksha Pariyojana Parishad (HSSPP). There were 101 fraudulent debit entries and 33 fraudulent credit entries in the account. The call records reflect that no telephonic confirmation was made or SMS was generated. Accused bank officials had forged the debit notes.
In the case of the Haryana State Pollution Control Board's account, several cheques/debit notes couldn't be found in the records. From the Municipal Corporation, Panchkula, bank account, there were 22 fraudulent debit transactions. No SMS was generated, nor was any call confirmation made. The amount was first credited to the branch's General Ledger account, and no such debit message was sent to the linked mobile number due to a technical fault in IDFC First Bank's system, found CBI.
In the scam involving 12 accounts across eight departments of the Haryana Government, there were 236 fraudulent debit transactions worth Rs 818 crore and 84 fraudulent credit transactions worth Rs 214 crore, resulting in a loss of Rs 504.36 crore.