Moroccan Bank Guard Sentenced for Embezzling Thousands from Customer Accounts

The defendant fled after defrauding dozens of people, mainly women in the region. Out of the more than fifty victims, only seven including 5 women were present in court. The director and an employee of the bank branch where the accused was responsible for security were also heard as witnesses during the trial.

These latter explained the modus operandi of the accused who approached each of his victims and, taking advantage of their illiteracy, offered to help them open bank accounts. The security guard managed to gain the trust of the victims, mostly women, who handed over their personal documents to him. He then encouraged them to request the issuance of bank cards. Once these cards were available, he kept them with him and used them to withdraw money from the victims’ accounts.

The accused would have thus diverted more than one million dirhams from the accounts of his victims, including widows, divorcees and housewives. The branch manager assured that she had reimbursed the embezzled sums to the victims, but the seven victims present in court claimed to have received nothing yet. The security guard would have withdrawn from their accounts amounts ranging from 17,000 to 150,000 dirhams.