Bengaluru: Six ex-staffers of firm siphon off US client's Rs 5 crore

BENGALURU: Six former customer care representatives of a private company allegedly duped their client firm of Rs 4.8 crore in the guise of potential customers of an online entity. The company filed a complaint against its f ormer employees.
Aegis Customer Support Services Pvt Ltd, a venture of Startek, located in Whitefield, identified Anurag Mech, Tesjaswini JN, Aakash U, Avinash Tulip, Samjay P and Sumith Singh as the suspects. While some of them were former employees of Aegis, the others were on its payrolls when the money transfers happened.
Expedia Group, an American online shopping company for consumer and business travel, outsourced its customer support to Aegis.
Expedia has a policy of refunding up to $100 to customers who do not avail services or who express dissatisfaction over them. Taking advantage of this, the accused created fake accounts to book hotels and airlines only to cancel them later and claim refunds. Though the bookings were made without advance payments, the accused refunded money. The fraudulent credits were made to the accounts maintained by them. The suspects impersonated foreign nationals by creating email IDs and opened bank accounts with the sole purpose of receiving online 'refunds' illegally, said the firm in its complaint. The fraudulent money transfers started in January last year and went on till May 25, 2020. The accused pocketed US $6,33,256 (Rs 4.8) crore.
Anurag Mech, who claimed he's still on the payroll of Aegis, told TOI : "I was not in town when the incident happened; the allegations are false. I've already informed the office that I'll cooperate with the investigation."
This is the third case registered by Aegis against its employees. The first was in June 2019 when the company alleged Rs 1.6 crore was transferred to unknown accounts. In the second registered in March, the firm said an employee had in four days transferred $50 130 times, tot alling up to $6,500 (Rs 49 lakh).