Commonwealth bank chose to keep $3.7m fraud ‘private’, court hears

A Commonwealth Bank lender who committed a $3.7 million fraud will get a lesser sentence because the bank chose not to report him to police for a decade.

The County Court heard the Commonwealth Bank chose not to report the $3.7 million fraud to police for almost a decade.

A Commonwealth Bank lender who committed a $3.7 million fraud will get a lesser sentence because the bank chose not to report him to police for a decade.

George Vrettakos, 42, pleaded guilty to three charges of obtaining financial gain by deception after he created fake lines of credit through the internal CommSec database in 2008 and 2009.

Bank investigators discovered three accounts linked to fake customers with credit lines totalling $3.7 million in 2010, with Vrettakos making admissions running to “hundreds of pages” of blowing cash on lavish lunches, booze and drugs.

But the CBA didn’t report the Mount Waverley man to police.

Police were only told of the crime during the banking royal commission.

Instead, it went through civil court to claim back half of the $1.3 million Vrettakos personally stole through his credit fraud.

“They decided that they would just deal with this privately,” defence lawyer Philip Dunn QC told a County Court plea hearing.

Mr Dunn conceded that Vrettakos “would have gone to jail” if his crimes were reported to police immediately.

But he said the CBA only notified police to his crimes in 2018 — soon after they were exposed in The Age newspaper during the banking royal commission.

The bank “chose to proceed this way”, Mr Dunn said, despite Vrettakos’ full and frank admissions to bank staff in 2010, after which he was fired.

“This man did everything to right the wrong that he made,” Mr Dunn said.

Crown prosecutor Jamie Singh said when a report finally was made, police had “absolutely no need for any further information” because the transcripts of Vrettakos’ admissions to CBA investigators a decade earlier were more than enough to charge him.

Mr Singh called for the former lender to receive a partially suspended sentence, saying “some imprisonment” was necessary.

But he said the inordinate delay “must weigh heavily” on the sentencing decision.

Judge Gavan Meredith told the court the delay was a “significant mitigatory factor”.

Vrettakos will return to court for sentencing on June 24.

@ashargoonA