A group behind a failed attempt to defraud a major bank of millions of dollars has avoided jail while it is being considered that they will potentially serve their sentences under house arrest.
The ringleader behind the plot, former NAB employee Monika Singh, 42, was sentenced to three years in prison on Monday in the New South Wales District Court.
Co-defendants Davendar Deo, 68, and Srinivas Naidu Chamakuri, 51, received two and a half years and three years respectively.
However, Judge Donna Woodburne said Corrective Services should assess whether they can serve their sentences through periods of home detention and community service work.
Judge Woodburne made it clear she would not impose intensive correctional orders on the group and would finalize matters at a later date.
The group was found guilty by a jury of attempting to steal more than $20 million from the bank using internal employee processes.
The trio were convicted of 19 fraud-related offenses between 2018 and 2020, including multiple counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage.
A jury accepted that Singh had provided Chamakuri and Deo with blank internal bank slips, which they then used to try to defraud NAB of a combined total of $21 million.
Monika Singh avoided a previous conviction for fraud while a NAB postgraduate trainee

Davendar Deo found guilty of attempting to defraud NAB of $4.8 million using voucher system
Chamakuri attempted to use the vouchers to withdraw almost $16.9 million in cash, while Deo was convicted of attempting to defraud NAB of another $4.8 million using the same fraudulent voucher scheme.
NAB did not lose any money as staff intervened to prevent funds from being transferred.
Judge Woodburne did not accept that stress, including Singh’s alleged childhood trauma, was the cause of his offending and said his conduct should be strongly reported.
The former senior associate at NAB’s Sydney branch attempted to argue she had “naively tried to help people without fully understanding the implications”, the court was told.
Having emigrated to Australia from Fiji in 2001 when she was 20, Singh was charged with a previous fraud offense in Queensland in 2006 and ordered to pay $1,751 with no conviction recorded.
At that time I was also working at NAB as a postgraduate fellow.

Srinivas Naidu Chamakuri left the court after receiving a three-year jail sentence
Lawyers for the three previously asked for leniency in sentencing, given that the crime was relatively unsophisticated and ultimately doomed to failure.
Todd Pickering, representing Singh, described the group’s efforts as “inept, desperate and ultimately fruitless.”
“The efforts here were very, very far from sophisticated,” he told the court.
However, Crown prosecutor Andrew Norrie said there was a level of sophistication given they would not have been able to attempt it without access to internal NAB documents.
“You can’t just rule it out,” he said.
The matter will return to court on March 21.