Bank manager steals $45,000 from ‘strong room’ by replacing genuine notes with fake ones

By Desire Emmanuel with Agency Reports

A bank manager in South Korea managed to steal 70 million won ($45,000) from his branch’s vault (popularly known as strong room) by replacing genuine banknotes with fake notes which are play money featuring cartoonish animals, the country’s media reported on Friday, July 3.

South Korean news media revealed that the branch manager of Saemaul Credit Union in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, confessed to taking considerable amounts of money from the bank’s vault and trying to cover up his actions by replacing the banknotes with fake bills.

But what really attracted people’s attention was the funny-looking bills he used in replacing the genuine ones.

Photos and videos of the fake notes used in the embezzlement scheme went viral on social media, causing a variety of funny comments from flabbergasted netizens.

The photos showed cartoonish replicas of 50,000-won banknotes featuring cartoon animals like ducks and bears.

The obviously fake bills could be spotted from a mile away, but the bank manager, whose identity was revealed, allegedly took advantage of the fact that no one actually checked the vault.

One of the country’s dailies, Chosun Daily, reported that this was a very small bank branch with very few employees and that the manager made sure that he was the one keeping the money in the vault every day.

When he went into the vault, the manager swapped some of the real bills with the play money he had allegedly ordered online.

It was unclear how long the man’s theft lasted, but at one point, another employee reported his unusual behaviour to the higher-ups, and the Saemaul Credit Union launched an investigation.

It didn’t take long for the investigators to figure out what the man did, but according to reports, the bank failed to immediately alert the authorities, opting to solve its problems internally.

In a press release, Saemaul Credit Union stated that it had sacked the bank manager responsible in this case, adding that he had returned the stolen money and that the bank considered the matter closed.