This week, we highlight the case of Shelbee Szeto a former executive assistant and finance planning manager at HP Inc, United States of America, was sentenced for money laundering, wire fraud, and tax fraud.

Szeto illicitly transferred USD 4.8 Mn in unauthorized payments from her HP commercial credit cards to several merchant accounts under her control. She obtained multiple American Express cards for business expenses and created fraudulent merchant accounts with PayPal, Stripe, and Square, which she managed while pretending to be legitimate vendors. Szeto unlawfully sent payments from the credit cards to these fake accounts. Szeto uploaded falsified invoices to HP’s internal system and misrepresented the payments to both HP and Square. To steal even more money, Szeto dishonestly represented the funds from HP to her bank, resulting in at least USD 4.8 Mn being fraudulently transferred from HP accounts into accounts she controlled. In addition, Szeto attempted to steal an extra USD 0.3 Mn from HP Inc.