Sticky fingered teller appears in court for fraud

Harare Bureau
A CBZ teller stationed at the bank’s Cripps Road Branch in Harare appeared in court on Thursday facing charges of defrauding the bank of $17,000.

Amos Chituu (33) appeared before Mbare magistrate Anita Tshuma charged with fraud.

Tshuma remanded him to April 17 on $100 bail.

Chituu was also ordered to surrender his passport to the clerk of court and to continue living at home.

Prosecutor Miriam Chiba alleged that on March 25 this year Chituu was on duty as a teller and also assigned the duty to be the vault custodian.

At the close of business, Chituu brought his cash before a co-custodian for verification.

The cash had already been sealed in treasury bundles, it was alleged.

The verification was done by Chituu and another vault custodian through bundle counting and not through note verification.

The two agreed on the amounts brought by Chituu and he took the verified cash back into the cubicle instead of taking the cash to the vault, it is alleged.

This action aroused the suspicion of the other custodian who then decided to peep through the glass panels to observe what Chituu was doing with the cash.

The co-custodian was suspicious of Chituu’s behaviour and reported the matter to the branch manager.

The branch manager decided to do a vault cash check and while going through Chituu’s treasury bundles, he discovered that there was a shortage of $7,800.

Chituu had hand placed a bundle of $2,000 in $20 notes in between two $100 notes.

By a casual look, one would assume the bundle was worth $10,000 when in fact it was $2,200.

After noticing this anomaly, the branch manager went on to do an audit of the vault reserve book and discovered that Chituu had a further shortage of $10,000.

In trying to conceal the shortage, Chituu had allegedly inflated the reserve total to $332,452 instead of the actual figure of $322,452.

Had Chituu entered the correct figure, the vault shortage would have been discovered earlier.

Chituu admitted to having taken $17,800 and he managed to pay back $8,700, leaving a balance of $9,100.