Auckland bank employee Aayush Arora’s gambling addiction sparked $262,000 embezzlement from ANZ

A former Auckland bank employee who embezzled $262,000 from the business to fuel a severe gambling addiction has been ordered to serve home detention so he can pay the money back – albeit at a rate unlikely to offer the lender much hope for a quick recovery: $130 per week.

New Lynn resident Aayush Arora, 25, used his position of trust as a personal banker to approve 15 fraudulent loans over a one-month period last winter while he was working from home.

ANZ bank discovered the missing money in a July audit and Arora was arrested in October.

He was able to immediately return $47,000 of the pilfered funds that had been unspent, but the remaining $215,000 “was largely gambled away at the SkyCity Casino in Auckland”, the agreed summary of facts for the case state.

Standing before Judge Debra Bell in Auckland District Court last week, Arora said through his lawyer that he could pay another $2500 in reparation immediately. The judge authorised an additional $20,000 to be removed from his KiwiSaver account. But more than $190,000 that remains missing will need to be paid off in instalments based on his new, less lucrative job working as a cashier at a South Auckland restaurant – an effort that the judge acknowledged would take “quite a few years”.

His weekly payments will be reassessed in a year to see if they can be increased, the judge ordered.

Police prosecutor Sam Papp described the embezzlement scheme as “high-end, sophisticated offending”, but she also noted that the defendant was cooperative with police. The bank supported a non-custodial sentence, she said.

Arora started gambling in 2019 while unemployed in an ill-conceived effort to support his family, according to a report provided to the court ahead of the sentencing hearing. He ended up taking out multiple loans from finance companies to pay off his losses, but the debt continued to increase significantly, the judge said.

“His intention was to gamble [the embezzled ANZ money] and pay off his debt to have a normal life, but it didn’t pan out that way,” the judge noted.

He knew it was wrong and was cognisant he was putting his career in jeopardy but “he was in so much debt and pressure, he felt it was his last way to save his life”, the judge said, summarising the defendant’s explanation.

Defence lawyer Hyuk Woo argued that community detention would be the best outcome after taking into account his client’s remorse, cultural factors, his early guilty plea and his previous good character. His family moved to New Zealand when he was a child and he was subjected to bullying, according to a report submitted to the court.

Judge Bell described the scheme as a “gross breach of trust”.

“The steps you have started to take are to be commended, Mr Arora, but you’ve got a long way to go,” she said as she rejected the community detention request but approved home detention.

Woo agreed his client’s gambling addiction was a “driving factor” in his offending. But he noted that his client is still young and working hard to address the issues, including having self-excluded himself from SkyCity Casino.

“It’s accepted Mr Arora has committed really serious offending and has caused a serious amount of damage,” Woo said. “He’s willing to repay.”

At the current rate of repayment, however, it will take just over 25 years to do so.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.