Former QOR GM Found Guilty of Embezzlement

Dimitrios Casdas, former General Manager of Australian panel provider Quality Online Research (QOR), has avoided a prison sentence after being found guilty of embezzling more than $AUD 300,000 from his previous employer.

Casdas (pictured) spent nearly six years at the Pymble, NSW-based firm, before which he worked at The Online Research Unit (The ORU) as Research Operations Manager and AMR Interactive as Projects and Panel Manager, helping to build the panel that became The ORU. He left QOR in 2016 and set up his own online data collection agency Catagraph, in the Parramatta suburb of Sydney.

At QOR, Casdas was responsible for paying panel respondents' incentives through PayPal. While carrying out this part of his role, he was found to have misappropriated $315,746 from the business, by making 677 transactions into his own or false PayPal accounts. After a civil case forced Casdas to return the money, the case was dismissed in the Supreme Court of NSW Equity Division. However, the Supreme Court judge then recommended QOR report the matter to the police.

At this point, Casdas was charged with eighteen counts of 'dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception'; and at Hornsby Local Court on Monday, Magistrate Bruce Williams sentenced Casdas to nineteen months imprisonment to be served by way of 'intensive correction' in the community, in addition to 400 hours of community service.

Web site: www.qor.com.au .