UPS cheated out of 2.8m yuan

Twenty-two men have been sentenced from four months to five years of probation for cheating a global package delivery company, United Parcel Service Inc (UPS), out of 2.8 million yuan ($459,256) by falsifying package sizes, a district court said Thursday.

The defendants stood accused of participating in a scheme in which UPS employees accepted bribes to help a struggling Shanghai-based transportation company reduce its shipping costs, according to a press release from the Pudong New Area People's Court.

The transportation company, Sanxing International Air Freight Transportation Agency Co Ltd, was struggling in 2010 when one of its owners, surnamed Wang, 36, decided to try saving money by falsifying shipping records. The court said Wang had heard it was a common practice for transportation companies.

Wang brought in the company's operations supervisor, a defendant surnamed Zhou, to find UPS employees willing to alter the shipping records for the company's packages.

Zhou used his connections at UPS to convince a defendant surnamed Kong, an operations manager at the freight center at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, and several other UPS employees to join the scheme.

In exchange for their help, Zhou took them out for meals and gave them cash and gift cards, the court said. He spent 10,000 yuan in total each month to pay off the UPS employees.

Sanxing International's business began to improve in 2011 as the UPS employees thought of ways to reduce the size of the company's packages, which allowed it to pay less on shipping, the court said.

UPS eventually discovered the scheme and called the police. According to the Shanghai Forensic Accounting Center, the defendants ran the scheme from 2011 to June 2012.

Wang and Kong were charged with "duty embezzlement" because they took advantage of their positions to make money illegally, the court said.

The court initially handed down prison sentences, but decided to give the defendants probation because they confessed and were willing to pay back the money. The defendants will face prison terms ranging from four months to three years if they don't pay back the money or otherwise fail to meet the terms of their probation.