Couple Allegedly Steals Millions from New York, the Flees to India

In what has been called a “massive and elaborate scheme” to steal taxpayer dollars, a business savvy couple is accused of defrauding the City of New York of at least $400 million and then fleeing to their native country of India. (Khalid) In June 2011, Reddy and Padma Allen were indicted in absentia in federal court. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated, “The corruption on the CityTime project was epic in duration, magnitude and scope…” The CityTime project is a New York City initiative meant to modernize a public payroll system for its municipal employees. (Khalid) Since its start in 1998 is has been crippled by cost overruns and delays.

According to the federal indictment, the project was originally budgeted at $60 million, but with the project still incomplete it had racked up a bill of more than $600 million, with the excess tainted mostly of kickbacks and fraud. The couple ran a company called TechnoDyne, which systematically overbilled and intentionally caused delays in an effort to elicit additional funding. While acquiring these erroneous funds they were depositing them into bank accounts in India. As of 2010, $400 million of the $600 million of the project had been paid to TechnoDyne, according to the indictment, “The individuals primarily responsible for the project collaborated in an effort to overbill and otherwise defraud the city by exploiting their authority and influence.” Ironically, Padma Allen, 43 was recognized in 2010 as one of Ernst & Young’s entrepreneurs of the year in New Jersey as well as one of New Jersey’s best 50 Women in Business. (Khalid)

In this case there were no behaviors that were good or appeared to be good. Unfortunately the couple did nothing to better their actions they just worsen them by fleeing to their home country. While we did not see any good behaviors we did recognize some of the bad unethical behaviors present in this case. We as a group noticed that this couple stold atlease $400