Leo Gao is a local business man from New Zealand’s who owned a BP service station along with a number of properties which he let. He and his girlfriend Cara Young and her daugher, lived in Rotorua, a picturesque city in the far North of the North Island. In early 2009 he applied to Westpac Bank for a $NZ100,000 loan presumably to support his business interests. The loan was subsequently approved but a mistake by a bank teller resulted in Leo receiving a 100 times more that the amount he had originally applied for.
The mistake was a simple one, the bank employee had forgotten to enter the decimal point resulting in a transfer of $NZ10,000,000 into Leo’s bank account. His face must have been a picture when he realised the untold riches that were now in sitting in his possession. By all accounts Leo acting quickly by transferring much of the money abroad to various accounts. Amazing the bank did not realise the mistake until a tip off from a member of the public. I can completely understand, it’s a common mistake to miss the fact you missing 10 mil from your coffers. Anyway, the bank suddenly realising their colossal error and went about with hast to reclaim the money. They manage to reclaim around $6.2 million but by this time Leo and Cara had vanished on a flight to Hong Kong and escaped with about $3.8 million. The chase was on.
As a side note, apparently these type of bank errors do occur from time to time. Given the number of loans banks approve each day…although maybe not so many during the recent credit crisis…it’s only a small percentage that go wrong, but it does happen. In most cases the bank will eventually notice the error and claw back the money. The difference in this case is Leo had the balls to take the money and run off with it.
Leo is of Korean origin so the obvious destination for him and Cara who be to head off to somewhere Asia, and he did. Reported sightings to date have included the bright lights and gambling meccas of Hong Kong and Maccau. Not a bad choice at all, if I had all that money I would have probably made a similar choice and head off to Vegas. The police, Westpac, special investigators employed by the bank initially all predicted they would be caught soon but 9 months later they are no closer to catching the fugitives. Excuses have started to appear, investigators held up by paper work with Chinese authorities etc. Those sort of things.
It emerged that Westpac had successfully managed to obtained a Hong Kong court order to freeze nearly HK$4million of money in Wynn Casino that allegedly was Leo’s. However the bank froze the whole of Wynn Casino Hong Kong account and not just the HK$4million!! Unbelievable. This caused Wynn “considerable losses and damaged its reputation” and now they are looking for substantial compenstation, and rightly so. Anyone would be a bit peeved if your whole business bank account was suddenly put on ice!! On top of that Westpac sold some of the mortgage properties owned by Leo to recover some of the lost cash, but had no choice but to sell them at a large loss. The whole episode is certainly proving to be very expensive mistake for Westpac.
The Westpac bank employee was not so lucky. She had 20+ years experience but ended up losing her job, not for this mistake but for another mistake that occurred a few months later. Unfortunately, it seems her card had been already marked.
This blog contains all the latest news, gossips, rumours regarding the great Leo and Cara getaway
The mistake was a simple one, the bank employee had forgotten to enter the decimal point resulting in a transfer of $NZ10,000,000 into Leo’s bank account. His face must have been a picture when he realised the untold riches that were now in sitting in his possession. By all accounts Leo acting quickly by transferring much of the money abroad to various accounts. Amazing the bank did not realise the mistake until a tip off from a member of the public. I can completely understand, it’s a common mistake to miss the fact you missing 10 mil from your coffers. Anyway, the bank suddenly realising their colossal error and went about with hast to reclaim the money. They manage to reclaim around $6.2 million but by this time Leo and Cara had vanished on a flight to Hong Kong and escaped with about $3.8 million. The chase was on.
As a side note, apparently these type of bank errors do occur from time to time. Given the number of loans banks approve each day…although maybe not so many during the recent credit crisis…it’s only a small percentage that go wrong, but it does happen. In most cases the bank will eventually notice the error and claw back the money. The difference in this case is Leo had the balls to take the money and run off with it.
Leo is of Korean origin so the obvious destination for him and Cara who be to head off to somewhere Asia, and he did. Reported sightings to date have included the bright lights and gambling meccas of Hong Kong and Maccau. Not a bad choice at all, if I had all that money I would have probably made a similar choice and head off to Vegas. The police, Westpac, special investigators employed by the bank initially all predicted they would be caught soon but 9 months later they are no closer to catching the fugitives. Excuses have started to appear, investigators held up by paper work with Chinese authorities etc. Those sort of things.
It emerged that Westpac had successfully managed to obtained a Hong Kong court order to freeze nearly HK$4million of money in Wynn Casino that allegedly was Leo’s. However the bank froze the whole of Wynn Casino Hong Kong account and not just the HK$4million!! Unbelievable. This caused Wynn “considerable losses and damaged its reputation” and now they are looking for substantial compenstation, and rightly so. Anyone would be a bit peeved if your whole business bank account was suddenly put on ice!! On top of that Westpac sold some of the mortgage properties owned by Leo to recover some of the lost cash, but had no choice but to sell them at a large loss. The whole episode is certainly proving to be very expensive mistake for Westpac.
The Westpac bank employee was not so lucky. She had 20+ years experience but ended up losing her job, not for this mistake but for another mistake that occurred a few months later. Unfortunately, it seems her card had been already marked.
This blog contains all the latest news, gossips, rumours regarding the great Leo and Cara getaway
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