Couple usurps Rs 2.3 crore from transport company; man arrested

CHENNAI: A 24-year-old man who connived with his wife and used her position as an accountant at a Transport company and usurped Rs 2.3 crore of the company's fund fraudulently was arrested by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Chennai police on Sunday.

The arrested person was identifed as P Mahesh of West Mambalam.

Chennai Police received a complaint from Jaffer Ibrahim, who owns Madan transport at West Mambalam. His company used to hire trucks from various owners for rent and his firm also have Fastag recharge business as wholesale dealer.

Mahesh's wife, Keerthana was working as a manager in the company and was handling company bank accounts and was also entrusted with net banking transactions. Taking advantage of this, Keerthana tacitly sent excess rental amounts from company account to the truck owners and then used to call them as if she sent excess amount by mistake and made them send the excess money to her personal Gpay account.

She also made false entries as if truck was taken for rent and made entries of fake lorry numbers and subsequently Keerthana diverted the money to the bank accounts of her husband and her husband's friends and relatives.

The couple managed to pull this off from 2020 to 2022, during COVID lockdown. In this period she had also received fastag recharge amount from customers and that too was not credited in the company's accounts, it was found. The couple cheated the company of Rs 2.31 crore, police said.

Mahesh was arrested and remanded to judicial custody.