A contract employee at Karnataka's Industrial Areas Development Board quietly siphoned off ₹16 crore using forged signatures and fake cheques over 28 months. The fraud was discovered during a routine report review — because apparently nobody looks at the reports.
Between October 2023 and February 2026, a contract employee named Santhosh Kumar at the Ballari zonal office of the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) systematically drained ₹16.17 crore from official accounts using forged signatures and fraudulent cheques. The operation ran undetected for 28 months — longer than most Indian startups survive their Series A. Seven people have been named in the FIR, including a Union Bank manager and staff who apparently found nothing suspicious about a contract employee processing crores in transfers. Kumar, displaying the only competence anyone at the office seems to have possessed, promptly absconded as the FIR was being filed. The fraud was finally discovered on March 11 during a "report review," raising the uncomfortable question of what exactly these reports contain if nobody reads them for over two years. The KIADB, an agency literally tasked with developing industrial areas, has instead demonstrated that its most productive industry is internal embezzlement.