HR firm staff steal applicants' pay, 3 held

An accounts manager at a Koramangala-based human resource company was arrested along with two of his accomplices for diverting salaries of 23 applicants to their bank accounts.

During the investigation, the police found that at least Rs 10 lakh that was to be disbursed as salaries for April for the 23 employees was diverted.

Based on a complaint lodged by a few applicants in May, the police probed into the company’s accounts section and suspected involvement of Syed Sulaiman. The trail led the police to the new bank account numbers that had replaced the account numbers of the applicants.

Probing the new accounts, the police zeroed in on two associates of Sulaiman, identified as Prashanth Kumar and Prashanth Ramu and arrested them.

The three persons confessed to the police and Sulaiman was listed as the prime accused of conspiring and orchestrating diverting the money.

What was his role?

Sulaiman’s role in the company was to ensure that the details of the applicants, including their email IDs and bank account numbers, are updated on the database.

Through this, he managed to get the login details of the applicants. “In March, he managed to change the bank account numbers of 23 applicants to his and his associates’ account numbers. The salary amount was credited to the new bank accounts,” said a senior police officer.

The police could recover only Rs 1 lakh from the suspects as they had already spent Rs 9 lakh on a lavish lifestyle.

The Koramangala police are investigating further.