A HR manager in Shanghai, China, identified as Yang, was discovered to have created 22 fake employees to collect their salaries amounting to 16 million yuan (PhP 126.6 million).
According to the South China Morning Post, Yang works for a labor services company that manages the payroll of employees at a tech company.
When he realized that he had sole authority over employee placement and that there was no salary review process, he created a record for an alleged employee, "Sun" and transferred his salary to his own bank account (but not in his name).
In 2022, the tech company's finance department discovered that Sun had perfect attendance and always received his salary even though none of the employees saw him.
After a thorough investigation, it was discovered that Yang had been running a scam since 2014.
Yang was sentenced to 10 years and 2 months in prison for embezzlement. He was also fined and banned from voting or running for any public office for one year.
He was also ordered to return 1.1 million yuan (PhP 8.7 million), while his family was ordered to return 1.2 million yuan (PhP 9.4 million) of the stolen funds.
