A former Apple worker has been sentenced to three years in prison for defrauding the company more than $17 million.
This was made known in a statement by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, according to the source.
In the release made public last week, the former employee, 55-year-old Dhirendra Prasad, from 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 US in November.
Prasad worked for Apple from December 2008 to December 2018, spending most of the time serving as a “buyer” who was responsible for facilitating the process for company to buy parts for warranty repairs on old devices.
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But he conspired with two Apple vendors to swindle the company by taking kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating billing statements and getting company to pay for items and services it had not received, according to the release.
Prasad also acknowledged not paying taxes on the profits he made from the scheme, the release says. He was originally additionally charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of tax evasion, but they were dismissed at sentencing.
The release disclosed that in addition to his prison sentence, Prasad was ordered to pay more than $17 million to Apple and nearly $2 million to the Internal Revenue Service. He also needed to forfeit more than $5 million in assets that the government had already seized.
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He also will serve three years of supervised release once his prison sentence ends.
The release states that Prasad had “substantial discretion” to make his own decisions to help Apple, but he chose to help himself.
“Prasad betrayed this trust, and abused his power to enrich himself at his employer’s expense – all while accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of compensation from Apple in the form of salary and bonuses. Additionally, Prasad used his insider information regarding the company’s fraud-detection techniques to design his criminal schemes to avoid detection,” the release states.
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