Mukund Mohan, the ex-Director at Microsoft Ventures and Amazon Business, has been arrested for fraud for allegedly forging documents to acquires over $5.5 million for six shell companies and laundering some of the money into his personal Robinhood brokerage account.
Mohan had supposedly attempted to claim these benefits by applying for eight loans to six of his companies under the US Paycheck Protection Programme that provides loans to businesses to retain workers during the pandemic.
The complaint stresses that Mohan did not have a single employee working in those companies, and some did not even have a business yet, as reported by TOI (1).
$2.3 million claimed for company with no employees
Mohan is currently working as the Chief Technology Officer at BuildDirect.com Technologies Inc, a site that connects people with home contractors, and earlier worked as an executive Amazon and Microsoft.
Mohan had come under the radar in India for similar reasons earlier. The former Microsoft executive claims to have founded over 5 companies and personally invested in 11 firms between 2008 to 2012 and funded two companies through the Napkin Stage investment fund.
The US Attorney’s complaint states, with reference to one of the loan documents, that Mohan said one of his companies paid over $2.3 million for payroll in 2019 and that the company had dozens of employees when in reality, Mohan acquired ownership of the company in May. It had no employees and has average monthly payroll expenses at a minimum of $172,250.
Some of the companies on behalf of which Mohan tried to raise loans included Mahenjo, Zuput, Zigantic, GitGrow, Vangal, and Expect Success.
