Mumbai: Employee Booked For Forging Documents & Cheating During Work From Home

A Mulund-based company named Exim Transtrade has registered a case against its former employee for allegedly defrauding the company and siphoning over Rs. 46 lakhs from them through cheating.

 Details of fraud

According to the complainant Ravindra Purohit (38), who works as a senior manager (organisation development), a man named Darshan Bhagwan More started working in their company in 2014 as an executive. Later in 2018, he was moved to the accounts and finance department as a senior officer and his work involved handling the company’s accounts, shipping line and suppliers.

Exim Transtrade was involved with another international shipping company – Maersk and all the work related to it was handled by More. More was also responsible for handling deals, making debit notes and providing commission amounts to the clients, said Purohit in his statement to the police.

In 2021, Purohit was contacted by a higher-up of his company who informed him about their trading account with Maersk being suspended after the latter company found a financial misappropriation. Following an investigation by the internal committee of Exim Transtrade, More’s role behind the fraud showed up, and he was removed by the company.

During the internal investigation, More confessed to being involved with Maersk’s employee named Arjun Rai, and together they created new bills through forgery, and misused credit notes – creating forged debit notes to transact the money to a different account. The commission amount which was supposed to be sent to Maersk was sent to other accounts that were shown as ‘agents’ but were accounts of More’s friends and relatives.

Purohit added all of this happened when the company allowed all employees to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Purohit’s company suffered a loss of Rs. 46,36,916, he said. On Friday, Purohit approached the Mulund police and registered a case against Darshan More and Arjun Rai under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant), 420 (cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code. Police have begun a probe into the matter, they said.