OREANDA-NEWS. January 27, 2012. Statistics prepared by Uniastrum Bank show that persons looking to obtain credit by unlawful means are attracted first and foremost by consumer lending schemes and that the most popular type of fraud is the attempt to secure credited funds using fake documents. As a general rule, fraudsters endeavor to deceive the Bank by submitting bogus income tax statements and employment record books containing false information regarding place of work and earnings.

In August and September, for example, Uniastrum’s Krasnodarsk branch thwarted two attempts to defraud the Bank of a total Rb 800,000. On both occasions the conmen sought to secure credit under Uniastrum’s Access program using counterfeit employment contracts and income tax statements and in each case the fraud was detected by Bank staff examining the application documents. Details of the attempted fraud were immediately forwarded to law enforcement agencies, who judged the evidence sufficient ground to instigate criminal proceedings. At the trials that followed, both guilty parties were ordered to pay hefty fines.

A similar story occurred last August at one of Uniastrum’s neighborhood banking centers in Moscow when a man (name withheld) applied for a personal loan of Rb 300,000. Staff who examined his passport recognized it as obviously counterfeit and contacted the police, who swiftly arrested the culprit. In December the man was sentenced to two years in prison.

“Uniastrum Bank is committed to improving its anti-fraud procedures on an ongoing basis,” notes Dmitri Dmitriev, Head of Uniastrum’s Anti-Fraud Unit. “We consider it our duty to inform customers about unscrupulous credit brokers operating on the market with whom doing business could seriously jeopardize a borrower’s credit history and create a whole variety of problems, and always advise everyone to deal directly with the Bank on any loan-related issue.”