Former Uber staffer ‘cheats company of Rs 1.17 crore by creating 388 fake driver accounts’

Police said the complainant stated that the accused worked as a contractor in the driver operations team at its office on Golf Course Road from August 2021 to December 2021. He was hired through a vendor and was responsible for driver arrears function, which involved handling of arrears due from driver partners to Uber. He resigned on December 19, 2021, said police.

Police said that according to the complaint, the accused allegedly created and placed non-genuine driver partner accounts in a company spreadsheet. “This was not a part of his scope of work and these accounts did not require any payments to be applied. Internal enquiries by the company found that the non genuine-driver partner accounts were created in bulk and in 191 cases out of 388, the IP addresses which were used to create these fake accounts matched with the IP addresses used by the accused to log into his work computer,” reads the FIR.

The FIR further states, “Of the 388 drivers, 345 had a phone number attached to their account and all 345 phone numbers were unique. Aside from a few duplicates, the names on the accounts were all different as well. There are 388 driver partner accounts which received money fraudulently and the money had been paid into 18 bank accounts. Each bank account was linked to many fake partner accounts.”

Police said the accused allegedly used an internal automated tool to apply tags to the driver accounts, which exempted them from some of the company’s fraud rules designed to prevent fraudulent payments.

“Whenever there is a negative balance in a driver partner’s account, the company employees or contractors message the driver partner to pay back the amount due from them. When the driver partner pays the money, a positive payment is applied to their account to remove the negative balance. The details of the positive payments to be applied to the accounts are uploaded to a spreadsheet which is uploaded to an Uber Payment Tool through an automated python script. This upload would add a positive balance to the driver partner’s account to remove arrears which would allow them to drive again,” added the complainant.

Police said the alleged fraud was detected after the accused resigned from the company. A senior police officer said, “A probe has been initiated. The accused is yet to be arrested.”

A spokesperson of Uber declined to comment on the case.

An FIR was registered against the accused under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant), 420 (cheating) and 477-A (falsification of accounts) of the Indian Penal Code at Sushant Lok police station, said police.