Former Planning Manager at HO, Inc. (USA), Shelbee Szeto, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering, and filing a false tax return in a scheme to defraud HP out of nearly $5.2 million.
In her role at HP during 2017-21, Szeto was responsible for making payments to HP vendors. For this purpose, the company had issued multiple HP commercial credits cards to her so she could make these payments on behalf of the company. However, Szeto misused her role and devised a fraudulent scheme to defraud her employer. She sent nearly $4.8 million in unauthorized payments from her HP commercial credit cards to various Square, PayPal, and Stripe merchant accounts that she controlled. She portrayed these accounts as belonging to legitimate vendors and uploaded fake invoices to HP’s internal system. Moreover, she attempted to steal another $330,000 from HP.
As part of her plea agreement, Szeto has forfeited several belongings such as the proceeds of a bank account, several luxury vehicles, bags and jewelry.
Source: US Department of Justice