Dressed in T-shirt, Bermuda shorts and slippers, and ‘armed’ with only a purported plan of the bank, a conman walked into a bank and coolly left undetected with a whopping RM600,000 from a safe room.
Calm and confident, a man carrying a backpack entered the bank at Damansara Heights at about 12.30pm on Sept 8, posing as a technician of a fire extinguisher company, The Sun Daily reported.
He told the staff he was appointed to inspect the serviceability of the fire extinguishers and asked to be allowed into restricted areas.
After showing the staff a purported floor plan of the premises, he met with the bank manager who asked him for identification. When he could not produce any, the bank manager reportedly disallowed him from carrying out the so-called inspection and left for lunch.
CCTV footage captured the man loitering at the premises before sneaking through a door behind the bank counters.
He apparently pretended to check the extinguishers while the unsuspecting staff were busy serving customers, edging closer to the bank vault where the cash was kept.
It was reported that the vault was accessible to only the bank manager and the chief cashier via a personal access code.
When the cashier walked into the vault, the man slipped a piece of magnet on the auto-lock latch of the door, disabling the latch from automatically locking the door on being shut.
Minutes after the cashier came out, the man walked towards the vault and coolly opened the door.
He stepped in and stuffed wads of cash into his backpack. Then he left the restricted area and coolly walked out of the bank.
Apparently, the thief had the audacity to stop and have a chat with the bank’s security guard, telling him that his staff who were to help him with the inspection had failed to show up and he would be back later after fetching them.
He is said to have also engaged in conversation with the chief cashier before pulling off the daring theft.
The whole sting took just 20 minutes.
It was only two hours later that the crime was detected.
At about 2.30pm, when the bank manager returned from lunch, he asked his staff about the whereabouts of the man but was told that he had left. He became suspicious and on checking the safe room, he found RM600,000 missing.
According to The Sun Daily, sources said that soon after the case was reported to police, investigators arrested the bank manager who is in his 40’s.
The manager was remanded for two days for questioning and freed after he was cleared of involvement in the case.
On Sunday, police arrested the chief cashier but she was also freed hours later after being interrogated.
It is learnt that both the manager and chief cashier have been suspended by the bank.
Investigators also found out that prior to the theft at the bank, the suspect had tried to pull off the same stunt at another company after claiming he was an air-conditioning technician summoned for repair work.
However, staff of the company became suspicious and denied him entry.
The man left and then went to the bank.
Reportedly, sources said investigators are appalled by the sheer negligence of the bank’s staff.
“He neither had an identification card of any company nor was he clad in attire that technicians usually wear. He casually dressed in shorts, T-shirt and slippers. All these should have raised suspicion,” the report quoted sources as saying.
Today, police released images of the suspect captured from CCTV footage to the public.
Brickfields police chief ACP Ruslan Khalid said police believe the man is in his 30’s.
Anyone with information about him can contact investigations officer ASP Mohd Hafizi bin Ishak at 017-2336343 or Brickfields police at 03-90516222.
You can also call Kuala Lumpur police hotline at 03-21159999 or SMS at 32728, or contact the nearest police station.