PANDOHIE’S PAIN

Richard Pandohie, chief executive officer of the Seprod Group, could not conceal the hurt and betrayal he felt after the police confirmed on Thursday that 17 current and former employees were arrested for orchestrating an elaborate scheme that defrauded the Jamaican conglomerate of $160 million.

The fraudu-lent scheme is believed to have had its genesis in October 2021, days after the company’s Newport West warehouse and offices were gutted by fire that left losses estimated at more than $1 billion, according to the timeline provided by the police.

Seven months later when it was uncovered, $159.8 million had already been stolen from the company, said Deputy Police Commissioner Fitz Bailey, who announced the arrests at a news conference.

The fire caused “major disruptions” throughout the company’s “entire systems”, particularly the information technology (IT) department, which the accused employees took full advantage of, he claimed.

Seprod Group has approximately 1,800 employees, and Pandohie sought to make it clear that the fraud was allegedly carried out by a small percentage of staff.

“It was super disappointing because when the fire occurred, with the loss of goods and everything, we didn’t need to keep all our employees. We could have downsized until we got back up, but we stood by every employee,” he said during an interview with The Gleaner on Thursday.

“Why it hurt so much is because it occurred in an entity that was suffering and recovering from the biggest blow to the organisation. In my mind, I naively thought that standing behind every one of our people in the worst of times would have been reciprocated as we build back together,” he said.

“But in the space of that dislocation, persons saw an opportunity and took major advantage of it,” Pandohie added.

The 17 detained current and former employees, whose ages range from 26 to 52 years old, were apprehended over the past two days during a series of coordinated police operations in Kingston, St Andrew, Clarendon, and St Catherine.

Already, 14 have been charged with embezzlement, conspiracy to defraud, access with intent to commit or facilitate the commission of offences under the Cybercrimes Act, engaging in a transaction that involves criminal property, and conspiracy to engage in a transaction that involves criminal property.

They are scheduled to appear in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court on May 22.

At least eight others accused of participating in the scheme are being sought by investigators, said Bailey, who urged them to surrender to the police.

The year-long police investigation led by the Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Division revealed that two IT employees “manipulated” the company’s computer system to allow at least 24 other workers involved in the scheme to collect goods from its warehouse, ostensibly for another entity within the Seprod Group, said Bailey.

The other accused workers were employed as route sales drivers and assistants, he said.

According to Pandohie, they include supervisory and support staff assigned to the data and sales teams.

Over the seven-month period the scheme was operating, the accused employees sold the goods and kept the proceeds for themselves, said Bailey, who declined to give further details, citing the ongoing probe.

Metry Seaga, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, said, “Instinctively, it seems like this kind of thing is happening more and more.”

Like Pandohie, Seaga heaped praises on the police for sticking with the investigation, asserting that the arrests should dissuade other employees thinking of engaging in similar activities.

“It’s a little concerning that people are turning to that behaviour,” he told The Gleaner.

The Seprod CEO said the fraud scheme, which was first uncovered by the company’s internal security team, appeared to be a “highly organised effort with a lot of collusion”.

Explaining how it worked, he said an internal system was manipulated to show that goods were still available when, in fact, they were not.

“Goods were taken out, whatever they did with them, but were not shown to be moved. There were ghost inventories being accounted for,” said Pandohie.

“It’s a lot of collusion involved. One or two persons couldn’t have done this. You had to have collusion at various levels because all the checks and balances would have been compromised,” he explained.

Pandohie said he was disappointed, but not broken, expressing confidence that the company would recover from the blow.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com