UNION CITY — When the owners of a Union City trucking company discovered $4.3 million missing from their company coffers, the pain they felt was twofold.
They didn’t notice the money vanished, the operators of Bay Area Transport allegedly told investigators, because they trusted their office manager implicitly. They’d known him since 2007, when they took him in, offered him an $80,000 a year job and even helped set up an arranged marriage, authorities say.
Now, the suspected thief, 44-year-old Darinder Dyal, is in jail facing 150 felony charges for allegedly stealing the money through checks written to himself, and for allegedly laundering it to avoid getting caught. Dyal’s bail has been set at $1 million and he’s set to be arraigned on Nov. 1, court records show.
“Both (owners) stated that they treated Dyal like their own son,” a district attorney inspector wrote in a probable cause statement filed in court.
Dyal was homeless and living out of his car in 2007 when he met the owners of Bay Area Transport, a trucking company based in Union City and Stockton. He became the manager of their office division, allowing him to sign off on fuel expenditures and communicate directly with clients, according to court records.
Over the years, Dyal gained the owners’ trust, so much so that they overlooked a major red flag. They would later tell investigators that sometime between 2010 and 2015, they found evidence Dyal had embezzled $10,000 to $15,000 but let it slide because they cared so much about him, authorities said.
Now that the case has been filed, new details have become public, including how authorities believe Dyal spent his allegedly ill-gotten gains. Authorities say he attempted to write some of the thefts off as gambling winnings, which fell in line with trips that the company owners say he regularly made to out-of-state casinos.
But Alameda County District Attorney investigators — who pored through financial records and Dyal’s own cellphone — say they have a much clearer picture of where much of the money went. Investigators allegedly found evidence that Dyal was making trips to the United Kingdom, where he is a citizen, and frequently traveling out-of-state on first class commercial flights and private jets, according to court records.
They allege he also went to Lake Tahoe, attended Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers games, gambled in Las Vegas, corresponded with “apparent sex workers” and sometimes had an “apparent girlfriend or escort” travel to England with him. They say his phone showed pictures of Dyal “cavorting with semi-naked women” in nightclubs and “digging” into large containers of processed cannabis as well, according to court records.
When investigators asked the company’s owners how they didn’t realize that $4.3 million had slowly disappeared, they said they weren’t “computer savvy” and had relied solely on Dyal for certain transactions. The alleged fraud came to light when one of the owner’s relatives was brought into the business and began taking a closer look at financials, authorities said.