Little did anyone know Dheerendra Prasad before he hit the headlines for defrauding the tech giant Apple of $17 million. The former Apple employee has been sentenced to three years jail term for cheating the firm. The Indian-American has also been asked to pay the iPhone maker $19 million for siphoning a whopping amount of $17 million from the firm.
The Charges
Prasad, 55, an Indian-origin former employee of Apple, was charged in March 2022 for stealing around $17 from the company through mail and wire fraud schemes. He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the US on November 2, 2022. He conducted the entire fraud between 2008 and 2018.
Modus Operandi
Prasad spent most of that time as a ‘buyer’ in Apple’s Global Service Supply Chain. Prasad’s role as an Apple buyer was to manage the procedure by which Apple purchased parts to make warranty repairs on older devices.
According to the Justice Department, Prasad took advantage of his position and conspired with two separate Apple vendors to defraud the iPhone maker by taking kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating invoices, and causing the tech giant to pay for items and services that it never received, resulting in a loss of more than $17,000,000.
Complex Operation
In 2013, Prasad committed many scams with the company, one of which involved him sending motherboards from Apple’s inventory to CTrends, a company controlled by his accomplice Don M. Baker. Baker disassembled the motherboard and extracted several components from it, which were sold back to Apple after Prasad placed purchase orders for Apple.
CTrends filed bills for the parts that were shipped, and Prasad processed payment from Apple. As a result, Apple was forced to pay for its own goods.
Prasad also evaded tax during this period. He also used insider information regarding the company’s fraud-detection techniques.
