A human resources (HR) manager at a technology company in Shanghai was sent to prison for scamming his company out of millions of dollars. He did this by creating fake employees and taking their salaries for himself.
According to a report by the Minhang District Prosecutor’s Office, the fraud was discovered in 2022 when the finance department noticed something odd. An employee named Xiao Sun had been on the payroll for six months with a perfect attendance record, but no one had ever seen them or knew anything about them. This led to an investigation that uncovered a major scam.
The HR manager, Yang, had been working at the company since 2014 and was in charge of managing employees. He realized that hiring and firing employees was under his control, and salary payments were not closely checked. Taking advantage of this, he began creating fake employees with names like Xiao Sun and Xiao Li, setting up bank accounts, and collecting their salaries.
Over eight years, Yang added 22 fake employees to the payroll and stole a total of 16 million yuan ($2.2 million). His scheme was finally exposed when someone noticed that Xiao Sun had never actually been seen in the office. When confronted, Yang admitted to the crime.
Although he managed to return 1.1 million yuan ($150,000) and his family contributed another 1.2 million yuan ($165,000), this was only a small fraction of the stolen money. In the end, Yang was sentenced to 10 years and 2 months in prison, lost his political rights for a year, and was fined for embezzlement.
