KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 — A Malaysian man was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Melbourne, Australia for using a fake passport to fraudulently withdraw A$680,605.82 (RM2.16 million) from an Australian bank.

Chan Seng Yee, 22, reportedly claimed he was paid AS$10,000 (RM31,730) for his part in the scheme by an international syndicate.

According to Australian newspaper Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Chan previously pleaded guilty to three charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception and one charge of obtaining property by deception.

The County Court last month handed down a three-year jail term with 18 months of a non-parole period to Chan, said the paper that described his activities as "modern-day bank robbery”.

Judge Mark Taft reportedly said Chan’s role was key to the "sophisticated and carefully orchestrated” scam and noted that "no other person has been charged by police”.

The paper said that Chan had entered Australia using a student visa in 2013 but was struggling financially, with the chain of events then kicking off from the nightclub promoter’s meeting last July at a casino of a man said to be part of an international syndicate.

Promised "fast cash” of around AS$30,000 a month, Chan reportedly agreed to the plan to take on another person’s identity to withdraw AS$1 million from the latter’s Bank of Melbourne account.

As part of the plan, Chan had to give a passport photo and to memorise details such as a name, phone number, email address and date of birth.

According to SMH, Chan claimed that a gun was used to threaten him to join the scam, and that he was allegedly told that he would be in Hong Kong when the scheme was over and that the actual account owner knew of the scheme.

Chan’s first withdrawal on August 5 saw him asking for A$30,000 in cash from a Bank of Melbourne branch, where he also asked for a replacement bank card after telling the bank that he had lost his mobile phone and wallet.

Chan was able to make a total of 34 different withdrawals from multiple bank branches in Melbourne in amounts up to A$85,000 in a month’s’ time and had also transferred the money to Westpac and NAB bank accounts, with none of the A$680,605.82 found.

Security cameras at Westpac and Bank of Melbourne branches have shown Chan at the branches 23 times.

The scam fell apart when the bank account’s owner alerted the Bank of Melbourne of a change in his online password and that his bank card was not working at ATM cash withdrawal machines, while the bank returned the money that went missing from his account.

SMH said the police officer in charge of the scam investigations, Detective Senior Constable Adam Burnett, noted a rise in similar scams involving the use of false foreign passports and said "visual examination of identity documents and archived signatures” will greatly reduce the number of such frauds.

Last October, Melbourne-based news portal The Age reported of Chan’s arrest for fraudulently withdrawing money from a rich Chinese national’s bank account, also noting that the Bank of Melbourne’s parent company Westpac does not impose a limit on cash withdrawals and merely advises its clients to call ahead for withdrawals exceeding A$5,000.