Getting a salary of lakhs of rupees every year without working may seem like a dream. But one such surprising case has come to light in a renowned healthcare company of America. Here a senior officer of Indian origin hatched a conspiracy of fraud which has shocked the entire corporate world. He gave a ‘no-show job’ to one of his childhood friends i.e. a job worth Rs 90 lakh per annum without coming to work. In return, the person took half the salary as bribe.
How was the fraud conspiracy hatched?
This whole matter is about Minneapolis. According to the US Attorney’s Office, 47-year-old Karan Gupta was the senior director of the data analytics department at Optum, a subsidiary of United Health. His own annual salary was Rs 2.3 crore. But out of greed, in 2015, he hired one of his acquaintances who had no qualifications for the post.
Karan prepared a fake resume for this appointment. In this manager level job, that person had to report only to Karan. That employee did not do any work for the company for about four years. He did not even login to the system for weeks. Despite this, he continued to receive salary, bonus and increment.
Half salary recovered from ‘ghost employee’
The real motive of this entire conspiracy was bribery. In return for this ‘ghost job’, Karan Gupta started collecting half the salary from that employee every year. This amount was around Rs 45 lakh annually. To ensure that no one gets a clue of this fraud, both of them adopted a very cunning method of transaction.
Initially that person used to withdraw cash from New Jersey and deposit it in Karan’s bank account. With this, Karan could easily withdraw money in California. Later a new bank account was opened for salary. The debit card of that account was mailed directly to Karan. Through this, he kept withdrawing the bribe amount directly from the ATM.
Revealed in internal investigation
In the year 2019, the company fired Karan Gupta from his job in another case. After this, when the company conducted an internal investigation, this big scam was exposed. The investigators found that under this entire conspiracy the company was defrauded of a total of $1.2 million i.e. Rs 11 crore.
After a six-day trial in the Federal Court, Karan has been convicted of fraud and money-laundering. The FBI has also considered this a gross abuse of position and trust. The investigating agency clearly says that the direct economic burden of such corporate scams falls on the common and hardworking people of the country. The entire system is affected by such crimes.