Foodpanda manager jailed for cheating company of $8,000
An employee of food delivery service Foodpanda cheated the company of almost $8,000 by creating fictitious delivery rides to settle credit card debts.
Firathul Fariz Ferhat, 28, was employed by Foodpanda in 2016 as a payment executive, with a monthly salary of $2,400.
His job was to tabulate payments to Foodpanda's freelance riders once every two weeks.
Firathul compiled the data using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, which included riders' names and bank account numbers. The spreadsheet would be submitted for approval before Foodpanda paid them.
Around January 2017, Firathul chalked up credit card debts and planned to amend the payroll spreadsheets.
The next month, he added a payment entry to a fictitious delivery rider and entered bank account details of his younger brother.
About $2,000 was paid to his brother, who then transferred the money to Firathul on his demand without knowing what Firathul had done.
Firathul did this twice more, each time with transactions amounting to more than $1,000, in 2016 and 2017.
In April 2017, he was promoted to compliance manager and his salary increased to $3,300. But he still could not pay his credit card bills as his expenses had increased.
His duties as a payment executive were also handed over to his colleague, and he no longer had access to the payroll spreadsheets.
But while vetting his colleague's work, Firathul made another entry of a fictitious rider with his own bank account number and about $2,500 was transferred to him.
In January last year, he was told there was a discrepancy for the riders' payments he had vetted. He was told by the auditors to make a police report.
After doing so, Firathul called his bank to recall the transfer made from Foodpanda's account.
He was discovered after one of the senior account executives noticed the return transfer with Firathul's name while going through monthly bank statements.
Yesterday, Firathul was jailed for two months for two charges of forgery for the purpose of cheating, with three other charges taken into consideration.
He has made full restitution.
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