From IPL to abroad: 6 ex-employees of Wabco held for fraud

CHENNAI: Avadi City police arrested six former employees of Wabco India limited in Ambattur for swindling Rs 7 crore of the company money by creating 126 bogus employees and credited their salaries to bank accounts created in the names of their friends and relatives.

With the ill-gotten money, the accused had made trips to watch IPL matches in Pune and trips abroad to Dubai and Thailand, flying business class and staying at luxury hotels. The fraud was done over a period of three years.

All those arrested were serving HR (human resources), accounts and finance departments of the vehicle automation systems company, police said.

“We have begun perusing their bank statements to find if they have acquired any properties with the money, ” said Inspector Geetha, Avadi CCB (central crime branch).

The arrested were identified as S Tychicus Vivek Kumar (32), of Periyar Nagar, M (29) of Nagapattinam, V Damodharan, (29) of Villivakkam, P Suresh (32) of Villivakkam, S Selvakumar (32) of Alangulam, Tenkasi, D Dilip Kumar (32) of Thiruvottiyur.

Tychicus Vivek and Dilip Kumar were senior HR executives in the company with close to a decade’s experience in the HR field.

Inspector Geetha said that the accused were privy to the application forms by job seekers to their company and using details filled in the forms of those rejected, they created bogus pay rolls showing them as new recruits and credited salaries in 93 bank accounts created by them.

They were also privy to the PF claims and other financial details of the employees who quit the firm and swindled money from the PF accounts too, police sources said.

Police said that friends and relatives of the accused were not aware of their fraud as they were made to believe that the accounts were for incentives provided by the company.

Their fraud got exposed during a recent internal audit. All the accused were arrested and remanded in judicial custody.