4 Georgians charged with defrauding ceramics company, USAO says

WSBTV.com News Staff
·2 min read
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Four former employees of a Georgia company, including a former executive, were indicted for allegedly defrauding their employer.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia, the four individuals worked for Calhoun-based flooring manufacturer, Mohawk Industries.

Department of Justice officials said Jana Kanyadan (Mohawk’s former Global Chief Information Officer), Sivakumar Thiyagasamadram, Madhu Shivalingegowda, and Chintan Sandesara were indicted on allegations of fraud.

USAO Ryan K. Buchanan said the four defendants allegedly used their positions to advance personal interests at their company’s expense and abused their authority to steal from their employers.

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In 2019, Mohawk Industries launched what justice officials described as a large, multi-year IT project, outsourcing the work on the project to IT consulting firms.

While this process was underway, the indictment alleges that the four defendants secretly created and controlled a company called Meta Technology Platforms, LLC, or Meta Tech, and then used their positions at Mohawk to hire Meta Tech as a vendor.

Doing so, USAO said the four diverted Mohawk’s outsourced IT work to Meta Tech. Between May and October of 2022, Mohawk was sent invoices from Meta Tech totaling more than $3 million.

Not only did the invoices not inform Mohawk that its own employees were responsible for the company being paid, but that the services Mohawk was charged for were never performed, the software products sold were never provided, and hourly rates were inflated and approved by Kanyadan as the Global CIO of Mohawk.

Thiyagasamadram, Shivalingegowda, and Sandesara were all working in Information Technology roles at the time.

Based on the fraudulent invoices, Meta Tech was paid about $1.86 million, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The case remains under investigation by the FBI, according to officials. The four were indicted by a federal grand jury on Sept. 12, and appeared in court for the first time on Thursday.

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