WE talk money with working professionals. As part of this series, we spoke to a marine engineer who was lured into opening a bank account with false promises.

NAME: Krishnan Subramaniam
Age: 35
Where I stay: Mumbai
What I do: Marine Engineer

Never trust an extra attractive financial scheme. Ask Krishnan Subramaniam. He would know. He opened a bank account with Citibank because it offered him a zero balance scheme and free RBI bonds worth Rs 10,000.

Sounds too good to be true? Right. It was not true.

The Subramaniams were approached by a person who claimed to be a Citibank agent. He told them that if they opened a savings account with Citibank they would get RBI bonds worth Rs 10,000 free. He also asked for a cheque of Rs 10,000 as minimum amount to open the account. He promised to convert their account into a zero balance account within days of opening it.

"The only incentive to open the account was the RBI bond promised by the agent," Krishnan says ruefully.

"We had a look at the terms and conditions of the forms we were filling up at the time of opening the account. But it had no mention about the bonds. When we asked the agent, he insisted we would get the bonds even though it was not mentioned anywhere in the form," says Krishnan. "And when we asked for a written statement for that promise, the agent refused to give it to us."

Next page: What was the bank's response?

Read:

• ULIP hoax: Make Rs 6 lakh in 6 years
• These financial planners goofed up, learned from mistakes!
  

Illustration: Vaibhav Shirke

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e-mail: Gayathri Madhavan

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