The HR manager of a Shanghai technology company was imprisoned for defrauding his company of millions of dollars by “hiring” dozens of fake employees and collecting their salaries.

The People’s Procuratorate of Minhang District, Shanghai recently released a “White Paper on the Prosecution of Duty-Related Crimes by Company and Enterprise Personnel in Minhang District” featuring a list of duty-related crime cases involving enterprise personnel handled in 2024, one of which attracted the attention of newspapers all over the country. Back in 2022, employees in the finance department of an unnamed Shanghai technology company discovered something strange: Xiao Sun, an employee who had been with the company for half a year and had perfect attendance throughout that whole period, seemed to be a complete mystery to everyone. No one had ever seen them in person or knew anything about them for that matter. The investigation that followed uncovered a massive fraud orchestrated by a single HR manager.

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Yang had joined the company’s human resource department in 2014 and was responsible for the reconciliation and management of employees dispatched in various departments. It didn’t take him long to discover a massive loophole: the hiring and resignation of employees depended entirely on his approval, and no one reviewed the payment of salaries. So he started making up new employees, setting up multiple bank accounts, and linking them to salary payments.

Over eight years, Yang “hired” 22 non-existent employees, using names like Xiao Sun, Xiao Li and others, and collected their monthly wages. Unfortunately for Yang, at the end of 2022, someone noticed Xiao Sun’s perfect attendance record, noting that no one had ever seen them. It didn’t take long for investigators to reach Yang, who admitted to stealing around 16 million yuan ($2.2 million).

The crooked HR manager managed to pay back 1.1 million yuan ($150,000) and his family also pitched in 1.2 million yuan ($165,000), which wasn’t bad, but nowhere near the amount defrauded over the last eight years. The HR manager was eventually sentenced to 10 years and 2 months in prison, deprivation of political rights for 1 year, and fined for embezzlement.