Employee Steals $9 Million
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Hunt underway for former San Jose water company employee who stole $9 million
By Howard Mintz
Federal agents are on the hunt for a former California Water Services Company employee who quit his job a few weeks ago, broke into the firm’s computers to wire $9 million into overseas bank accounts and then fled the region when confronted with criminal charges in Santa Clara County.
In court documents filed today in federal court in San Jose, law enforcement officials have charged Abdirahman Ismail Abdi with unlawful flight from prosecution after he disappeared from the area earlier this month. Local prosecutors and police determined that Abdi has been trying to flee the country since at least May 1, when he tried to book a flight to London just days after police searched his South Bay home.
Court papers show that Abdi, 32, resigned from his job as an auditor for the San Jose-based water company on April 27, and was spotted by a janitor returning that night to the office of a former co-worker. The following morning, water officials discovered that Abdi had engineered three wire transfers totalling more than $9 million from the company’s accounts to an account in Qatar. The accounts were frozen and the money returned to the water company, according to court papers.
But San Jose police then closed in on Abdi, finding that he had put his wife and two children on a plane to Frankfurt, Germany on April 28. Officials believe Abdi fled the country, perhaps to Canada, on May 5, according to a letter sent last week from the district attorney’soffice to San Jose federal prosecutors.
According to the same letter, Abdi is not a U.S. citizen and was ordered deported to Somalia in 2005.
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