Ad firm officials accused of pocketing crores

In a massive corporate fraud, three officials of the classified advertisement company Quikr have been accused of faking business transactions with fictitious clients and pocketing crores in commissions.

Quikr has filed a complaint against its accounts head, area manager and zonal manager, accusing them of massive fraud and cheating the company by faking transactions in the name of non-existent clients.

Madhusudhan Vishwanaath, owner of Ved consultant and Quikr's official representative, has filed the complaint against Rakesh Kumar, account manager and native of Gurgaon; zonal manager Rajat Goyal, a native of Uttar Pradesh; and Natasha Sipani, area zonal manager, a resident of Bengaluru. The trio had been working with the company since 2017, 2018 and 2015, respectively.

Vishwanaath stated in his complaint that the trio had introduced hundreds who own PG accommodation to the Quikr portal in Bengaluru and Delhi from June 2018 to December 7 2019. After signing an agreement with the owners, they released their commission.

The officials then conspired with the PG owners to create documents of fictitious business transactions, submit it to Quikr through the owners and themselves approve the documents on behalf of the company.

They then released the commission to the owners and received a cut. The complaint further stated that the officials registered fake PG accommodations with fabricated documents and, despite the accommodations not existing, created documents to show business transactions that qualified for commission from Quikr.

Vishwanaath said in his complaint that Quikr appointed an official to investigate the trio, but they threatened the official when he went for an inquiry. He said the company had incurred losses running up to several crores.

When DH contacted him, Vishwanaath said the trio defrauded the company, and declined to comment further.

The Jayanagar police have booked the trio under IPC Sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 506 (criminal intimidation), 477A (falsification of accounts) and 120B (criminal conspiracy), and are investigating the case.