Cyberabad police nabs ex-Amazon employee for embezzling funds of Rs 3.2 cr

Hyderabad: The Cyberabad EOW (Economic Offence Wing) police arrested a former employee of an Amazon company involved in misappropriating funds to the tune of Rs 3.22 crore.

The arrested person, Mettu Venkateshwarlu, a former Senior Financial Operational Analyst-Payroll in Amazon Development Centre (India) Private Limited, Financial District, Nanakramguda, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, had transferred an amount of Rs 3,22,04,456 to different accounts. The police booked a case U/s 403, 408, 420, 467, 468, 471, 477-A, and 201 r/w 120-B IPC.

According to the police, the main duty and responsibility of the accused is to process and manage the end-to-end payroll activities of Amazon’s active employees, including inactive and ex-employees full and final settlement dues. But Venkateshwarlu and his accomplices conspired with each other and hatched a plan to divert the inactive or ex-employees full and final settlement amounts to their accomplices’s bank accounts by creating forged emails, and bank statement files.

Venkateshwarlu and his accomplices used to identify certain unclaimed long pending outstanding payments, prepare working files of bank transfers, change the bank account numbers of such inactive or ex-employees, update them with the bank account numbers of his accomplices, and divert an amount of Rs 3.2 crore in the name of full and final settlement into their ‘friends and relatives’ bank accounts for the period from 2016 to 2023.

M Hussaini Naidu, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Economic Offences Wing Police, said, “The accused, in connivance with his accomplices, has fraudulently siphoned off Rs 3.2 crore into 50 bank accounts of his friends and relatives bank accounts by misusing his official position and deprived 184 inactive/ex-employees dues and caused wrongful loss to the tune of Rs 3.22 crore to the Amazon Development Centre (India) Pvt Ltd.