Do you dare to scam the company you work for? This is what a group of six Apple employees thought who proposed a elaborate plan to take advantage of the company's charitable giving program, managing to embezzle more than $150,000 before being discovered.
And internal scams within big tech companies are more common than you might think. Actually This is not the first time that Apple has been directly scammed. On another occasion, they managed to “plant” more than 6,000 fake iPhones and get 2.5 million in exchange. Today's scam isn't far away either.
A plan that started with fake charities
What seemed like a simple corporate giving program turned into one of Apple's most elaborate scams. Siu Kei Kwan, 37, of Castro Valley, was the ringleader of the operation. He recruited five other Apple employees to carry out his project. ANDThe group appealed to two seemingly legitimate charities: “American Chinese International Cultural Exchange (ACICE)” and “Hop4Kids”, where Kwan coincidentally was CEO and accountant respectively.
The Key to Deception: Take Advantage of Apple's Matching Program
The method was as ingenious as it was fraudulent. Employees made donations through Benevity, an external platform that Apple uses to manage donations. The Cupertino company has a generous policy: for every dollar donated by an employee, Apple contributes between 100% and 200% additional. Fraudsters took advantage of this system to multiply their profits.
A network of refunds and false declarations
Between 2018 and 2021, the operation worked like a well-oiled machine. Kwan secretly refunded donations to colleaguesretaining additional funds provided by Apple. But they didn't stop there: they also filed fraudulent tax returns, claiming tax deductions for donations that never came out of their pockets.
The fraud revealed and its consequences
The bubble finally burst when Apple detected irregularities and actively collaborated with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office. Investigations revealed that the group managed to extract approximately $152,000 from the donation program and falsely reported approximately $100,000 in tax deductions. The six involved now face multiple charges for serious crimes:
- Grand theft
- Conspiracy to commit grand larceny
- Perjury
- Tax fraud
In addition, due to the amounts involved, an aggravating circumstance for white-collar crime was added. The prosecution has already issued arrest warrants for everyone involved, although trial dates have not yet been set.
Source | CBS
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