Mukund Mohan, A Former Executive At Amazon And Microsoft, Arrested For Embezzling $5.5 mn From US COVID-19 Stimulus Scheme

Mukund Mohan, a former executive at Amazon and Microsoft, was arrested and charged on Thursday by US Department Of Justice for forging documents and embezzling $231,000 from Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a federal stimulus aimed at helping businesses preserve jobs amid the COVID-19-linked economic collapse, Seattle Times reported.

According to the charge-sheet filed by U.S. Attorney, Mohan submitted “fake and altered documents, including fake federal tax filings and altered incorporation documents” to avail benefits from Paycheck Protection Program for six shell companies he owned, and subsequently transferred some of the money to his Robinhood brokerage account “for his personal benefit”.

In one application, Mohan claimed that one of his companies paid more than $2.3 million for payroll in 2019 and that the company had dozens of employees, according to the indictment. But in reality, Mohan acquired ownership of the company in May, and it had no employees.

Mohan is currently chief technology officer at online Canadian building materials retailer BuildDirect. Mohan had previously worked as a director of product management at Amazon Business and a director of engineering at Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Business.

According to a detailed investigation in 2015 by tech portal Inc 42. Mohan may have embellished or even fabricated his credentials as technology leader.