Former Apple Employee Sentenced for $17M Fraud

A former Apple employee has been given three years in jail for a fraud scheme that cost the company more than $17 million.

In November, Dhirendra Prasad, 55, of Mountain House, California, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California on Wednesday.

From December 2008 to December 2018, Prasad worked for Apple. For most of that time, he was a “buyer” whose job was to make it easier for Apple to buy parts for warranty fixes on old devices.

But, according to the release, he worked with two Apple vendors to cheat the company out of money by taking kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating billing statements, and getting Apple to pay for things and services it had not gotten.

Prasad’s Sentence

The release also says that Prasad admitted that he did not pay taxes on the money he made from the plan. At first, he was also charged with two counts of plotting to launder money and one count of not paying taxes, but those charges were dropped when he was sentenced.

In addition to his jail time, Prasad was also told to pay more than $17 million to Apple and almost $2 million to the IRS, according to the news release. He also had to give up more than $5 million that the government had already taken from him.

After he gets out of jail, he will also be under watch for three years.

The release says that Prasad had “substantial discretion” to make his own choices to help Apple, but he chose to help himself.

“Prasad broke this trust and used his power to get rich at his boss’s cost, even though he was getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Apple in salary and bonuses. Also, Prasad used his secret knowledge of the company’s fraud-detection methods to plan his crimes so that they wouldn’t be caught, the release says.”

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