Trio avoid going to jail despite prison sentences for bungled $21 million bank fraud

A group behind a bungled attempt to scam millions of dollars from a major bank have avoided going to jail while they are assessed to potentially serve their sentences at home.

The ringleader behind the plot, ex-senior NAB employee Monika Singh, 42, was sentenced to three years' jail on Monday in the NSW District Court.

Co-accused Davendar Deo, 68, and Srinivas Naidu Chamakuri, 51, were also given jail terms for their roles in the scheme, receiving two-and-a-half years and three years respectively.

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However, the trio were referred by Judge Donna Woodburne to be assessed by Corrective Services to potentially serve their sentences through periods of home detention and community service work.

Woodburne made it clear she was not imposing intensive corrections orders on the group and would finalise the matters at a later date.

The group were found guilty by a jury of attempting to steal more than $20 million from the bank using internal employee processes.

The trio were convicted of 19 fraud-related offences between 2018 and 2020, including multiple counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage.

A jury accepted Singh had provided Chamakuri and Deo with blank internal bank vouchers, which they then used to try to cheat NAB out of a combined $21 million.

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Chamakuri attempted to use the vouchers to withdraw almost $16.9 million in cash, while Deo was convicted for trying to cheat NAB out of a further $4.8 million using the same fraudulent voucher scheme.

NAB did not lose any money as staff intervened to prevent the funds being transferred.

Woodburne did not accept that stress, including Singh's childhood trauma, was the reason behind her offending saying her conduct should be firmly denounced.

The former senior associate at NAB's Sydney branch attempted to argue she had "naively trying to help people without fully understanding the implications," the court was told.

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Having migrated to Australia from Fiji in 2001 when she was 20 years old, Singh was charged with a previous fraud offence in Queensland in 2006 and ordered to pay $1751 with no conviction recorded.

At the time she was also employed by NAB as a graduate trainee.

Lawyers for all three previously called for leniency in sentencing given that the offending was relatively unsophisticated and ultimately doomed to fail.

Todd Pickering, who was representing Singh, described the group's efforts as "inept, hopeless and ultimately unsuccessful".

"The efforts here were very, very far short of sophisticated," he told the court.

However, crown prosecutor Andrew Norrie said there was some level of sophistication given that they would not have been able to attempt it without access to internal NAB documents.

"It cannot just be written off," he said.

The matter will return to court on March 21.