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FBI seeks manager over missing funds

BY JOHAN FERNANDEZ
NEW YORK: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking for a Malaysian manager of a Chinatown bank in connection with the embezzlement of over US$1mil (RM3.8mil) that caused a panic among thousands of depositors.

The FBI went to arrest Carol Lim, the branch manager of the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, to assist in their investigations but found she had disappeared from her home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn on Wednesday.

People known to the Lim family said they believed the woman, who had been working in the banking sector here for over 10 years, was still in New York.

Lim was sacked from the Abacus Federal Savings Bank's Canal Street branch two weeks ago after an internal audit revealed a number of irregularities in the accounts.

According to the chairman of the bank, Thomas Sung, Lim is alleged to have taken more than RM3.8mil through a complicated scheme using bogus accounts and falsified bank records.

Following a newspaper report of Lim’s sacking, rumours spread that the bank was in trouble and about to shut. This led to a mad scramble by depositors to withdraw their savings at the six branches of the bank.

The worst scenes were at the bank’s branches in Canal Street and Bowery Street in the Chinatown area that led to police being called in to control the crowd.

There were wild scenes as people scrambled to get into the bank. Police managed to get the crowd under control and allowed batches of 20 to enter the bank.

Besides withdrawing their money, clients also emptied their safety deposit boxes.

There were similar scenes, albeit on a smaller scale, at the bank’s branches in Brooklyn, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

The situation seemed to have improved later following reports that the federal office of Thrift Supervision, which regulates institutions like Abacus, confirmed that the bank was solvent, but had liquidity problems caused by the run on the bank. They appealed for calm.

Despite these assurances, customers were not convinced and more are expected to withdraw their savings.

Justice Department broadens investigation of FBI's DNA lab practices
Sunday,April27,2003,5:36 PM

Washington-AP -- An investigation into alleged wrongdoing by an F-B-I forensic technician has been widened to look into possible shortcomings within the lab itself.

The inquiry is expected to last several more months. It's already led to changes in the D-N-A unit.

Government officials say an F-B-I technician went undetected for two years as she failed to follow required procedure in analyzing D-N_A evidence.

The lab analyzes D-N-A in hundreds of crime cases a year. D-N-A evidence has become increasingly important in criminal cases and in appeals from old convictions before D-N-A evidence was widely used.