Fraud by Indian-Origin in US: A man of Indian origin, Karan Gupta, has been convicted in the US for stealing more than $1.2 million (about ₹11 crore) from his employer. His scheme? He hired a lifelong friend for a cushy, high-paying job even though the guy wasn’t qualified at all.
Gupta, 47, worked as a Senior Director at Optum, the Minnesota-based subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. He was pulling in more than $260,000 (roughly ₹2.3 crore) a year himself. But that wasn’t enough, apparently.
Indian-Origin Optum Executive Convicted in $1.2 Million Kickback Fraud Scheme
The scam started back in 2015. Gupta brought his friend onboard at Optum, giving him a managerial data engineering position. To get the job, the friend used a fake resume that Gupta cooked up.
Once the friend got in, Gupta became his direct boss. And for almost four years, the friend basically did nothing.
He collected a six-figure salary, watched it grow with raises and bonuses, but didn’t meet anyone else at the company, barely sent any emails, and sometimes didn’t even log into his work computer for weeks.
But here’s where it gets really shady: Gupta told his friend to pay back over half his salary as kickbacks. They tried all sorts of tricks to hide it.
$1.2 Million Corporate Fraud: Optum Executive Found Guilty in Fraud Case
At first, the friend, who lived in New Jersey, would take cash out of his own account and drop it into a New Jersey branch connected to Gupta’s bank.
That way, Gupta could just grab the cash from California. Later on, the friend opened a separate checking account for his paychecks, handed the debit card to Gupta, and Gupta used it to pull cash from ATMs in California.
It all fell apart in late 2019, when Optum fired Gupta for a different scam. That’s when the company started digging and found the whole mess.
They handed everything over to federal investigators. All told, officials say Gupta’s various schemes cost the company more than $1.2 million.
Karan Gupta, age 47, a Senior Director at Optum, a subsidiary of United Health Group, was found guilty after a six day trial on multiple counts, including fraud and money laundering conspiracy, for hiring an unqualified friend for a position where the friend did no work and paid… pic.twitter.com/cgIWXGXvhK
— FBI Minneapolis (@FBIMinneapolis) February 18, 2026
Corporate Crime in Minnesota
According to Rosen, the US attorney, a statement that people who come up with fraudulent schemes to drain money out of legitimate firms should be brought to book, kickback schemes and no-show jobs sabotage companies.
Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis Field Office of the FBI, Rick Evanchec, indicated that Gupta betrayed his authority by developing a so-called ghost employee scheme to receive several hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks in a number of years.
According to him, the FBI vows to bring anyone in high places to book, especially when the burden of their actions is eventually transferred to the hard-working Americans.
