Posts
I came across the word MOUNTEBANKING at the editorial of The Times of India of 30thOctober 2026.
I didn't know what it was. I checked. This is what I found.
Mountebanking is the act of acting as or engaging in the behavior of a mountebank—a charlatan, quack, or fraudster who uses showmanship, empty promises, and trickery to deceive people.
Historically, the term comes from the Italian montimbanco (someone standing on a bench or platform to hawk fake medicines). In modern commentary, it is sometimes used metaphorically to describe institutional breaches of trust, such as financial fraud, internal bank staff misusing credentials, or confidence tricks that bypass internal security systems (like the "maker-checker" verification process).
Key Concepts
Origin: From the Italian montare ("to mount") + banco ("bench").
Literary/Classic Meaning: A trickster or fake doctor selling bogus cures with flashy storytelling.
Figurative/Banking Context: A breach of trust where institution staff or individuals exploit internal loopholes, unauthorized account modifications, or diverted funds to deceive clients.
There was a quote from Bertolt Brecht on top of the editorial. It read:
"It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk"
Let me reproduce the editorial which is poignant.
MOUNTEBANKING
Branch level fraud dents customers' trust in banking services, which are the backbone of a modern economy.
Banks pay interest, advise on investments, provide lockers, but for ordinary folks they are first and foremost a safe place to park funds.. A PNB branch in Greater Noida, outside Delhi, has broken this trust. Its rural customers, newly enriched through sale of land, have been allegedly conned out of Rs.35 Cr. The culprits appear to be bank staff, who closed FDs and transferred funds to unrelated accounts without authorisation. Mountebank is an old fashioned synonym for charlatans. We christen this breach of basic trust by a bank, mountebanking. Unfortunately mountebanking isn't rare.
Recall the case from Kota, Rajasthan, last year when a former ICICI Bank relationship manager was accused of siphoning Rs.4.6 cr from customer accounts over two years. How? She changed the phone numbers linked to accounts, so customers never got transaction alerts. There was a case from Delhi in 2024, when an ICICI branch manager allegedly duped an NRI out of Rs.13.3 cr. He created fake accounts, issued debit cards and cheque books for them and diverted her money. In 2023, Bank of Baroda staff reportedly stole Rs.22lakhs from 362 customers by linking unauthorised numbers to their accounts.
None of these is a high tech scam. Rather, they're confidence ricks or failures of bank's internal systems. they happen when the so called "maker-checker" system, which require two different persons to authorise a sensitive transaction, breaks down. It may happen, among other things, due to collusion or when banks use offline processes meant for network outages or when a staffer misuses login credentials of a former employee.
Often, the intention isn't to rob customers, but to profit from their money and return it unnoticed. The ICICI Kota RM bought shares with embezzled funds, but ran up losses. Sometimes, performance pressure from banks leads to such cheating. In the BoB case, staff were pushed to onboard customers to the bank's mobile app, which gave them a chance to introduce unauthorised numbers. It's true that banks repay customers after such frauds, but every such case shakes people's faith in the banking system. And usually, it's newly banked rural folk, or senior citizens - these are the most vulnerable groups - who are affected. RBI and Department of Financial Services must do more to curb such fraud, with stronger checks and stricter punishments.
