New Delhi: Paytm Mall has reportedly hired the services of Ernst & Young (EY) to probe into cashback fraud involving its employees who created a bogus list of partnered merchants, orders and customers to divert funds. Paytm Mall employees allegedly in collusion with third-party vendors, created sham orders, involving a certain set of vendors and customer profiles, stealing the cashback deals as they got bribes for their help, the Times of India reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.

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“Apart from the administration, finance, and other support functions, the company also has a business operations team which works closely with partnered merchants to plan and execute cashback offers & promotions, leaving scope for collusion. The EY partnership will also undertake audit & fraud prevention using both human and artificial intelligence,” according to the sources which quoted a Paytm Mall spokesperson as saying. 

According to the sources, these orders were of small sizes to make sure it doesn’t come to the light early and there was a circle of orders, vendors, and consumer profiles that were largely circling back to each other multiple times. The cashback in volumes made huge gains, even after losing some money for canceling orders. The Paytm Mall’s highlighted this fraud as it reported massive losses, which led to the fraud prevention audit by US advisory firm EY India.

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