Purpose Banking industry peculiarly has become soft target for several pernicious deceptive and fraudulent activities. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the literature published in past 20 years on bank frauds and present a holistic view on causes and consequences of bank frauds and measures to curtail this menace. Towards the end the paper provides avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review approach is used in this study and articles are selected via pre-set inclusion criteria. The literature is mapped on the basis of databases, year of publication, country of study and journal of publication. This paper is based on 70 selected articles published in four prominent databases between 2000 and 2021. Findings This study reveals that frauds in banking industry have become a matter of grave concern for almost all countries across the globe, causing significant financial and non-financial damages to banks, customers, other stakeholders and economy. Numerous factors such as pressure and opportunity are responsible for fraud occurrence. This study further evinced that banking institutions inevitably should have a robust fraud risk management in place to prevent, detect and respond to defalcation. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only paper among 70 selected articles which systematically reviews the literature published in past 20 years and provides a comprehensive view on all aspects related to bank frauds.