3 Uber representatives booked for defrauding firm of Rs 3.19 crore

Three men were booked, on Wednesday, for allegedly colluding with registered drivers of cab aggregator Uber and defrauding the company of Rs 3.19 crore by transferring the amount without authorisation.

The accused— identified as Sumaila Husen, 27, from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, Aman Saini, 21, from Sonipat and Umesh Kumar, 23, from Rewari in Haryana —made fraudulent payments to 183 registered drivers against a share in the payout, the police said on Thursday.

A complaint in this regard was lodged by the general manager of Uber in October last year and an investigation was carried out by Economic Offences Wing (EOW), with which the company had shared evidence, such as bank account details and transaction slips.

Urban India Systems Private Ltd, which is a part of the Uber group of companies and provides support service to the cab aggregator including promoting the use of the Uber App in India, had filed a complaint with the police highlighting that accused were engaged as a temporary contractual employees hired through a third party.

The police said that a report by EOW was submitted on Wednesday following which a case was registered under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 415 (fraudulently or dishonestly induces the person so deceived to deliver any property), 417 (cheating), 418 (knowledge that wrongful loss may ensue to person whose interest offender is bound to protect), 420 (cheating), and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code at Sector 29 police station.

Uber conformed registration of the case but refused to comment on the same.

Assistant commissioner of police (DLF) Karan Goyal said Nitesh Bhushan of Uber India Systems Private Limited had complained against the three accused were engaged by the company as temporary contractors through a staffing agency for contacting and providing support to driver partners who were newly registered with the Uber Application in Delhi-NCR.

“None of the accused were directed to or were in-charge of transferring or receiving payouts to anyone on behalf of Uber. They were not allowed or authorised to give any incentives to the driver partners. But, it was found that they had fraudulently transferred Rs 3,19,11,891 to accounts of drivers and some of the money to their own account that amounted to wilful criminal action,” Goyal said.

Talking about the modus operandi, Goyal said that the accused used to approach registered drivers and reach an agreement with them about “sharing profits”. The accused used to tamper with their profile stored in the internal database of the company and transferred around Rs 70,000 each to around 183 drivers.

The amount was transferred to the account of the drivers registered with the company. Thereafter, accused used to take a major share of the amount from the driver as their share.

“The drivers willingly shared the amount with the accused as they are were getting illegitimate monetary gain,” ACP said.

The complaint told police that he had engaged the services of the accused since April 9, 2018 as a community supports representatives. The fraudulent transactions were allegedly made by tampering with the company’s internal data for 10 weeks between August 11 and October 15 in 2018.

The company had also provided the list of drivers who got the illegitimate gain in collusion with the accused, who had joined the company between April and June last year.

The complainant told the police that misappropriate of funds came to their notice on October 23 when some of the registered driver partners told them that they are being approached by some people claiming to be personnel authorised by the company, promising them more incentives.

Following this complaint, the company investigated the matter internally and found out that the three accused had allegedly fraudulently misappropriated funds to the tune of Rs 3.19 crore.

The internal investigation found that the accused had “discreetly and wrongfully” reached out to the registered driver partners and promised them monetary incentives over and above their weekly payout on condition that the drivers would share a percentage of the incentive with the accused.

First Published: May 31, 2019 01:32 IST