Former Indian-origin employee sent to jail for stealing $17 mn from Apple

Dhirendra Prasad, a former Apple employee who was charged with defrauding tech large Apple and associated tax crimes, has been sentenced to three years in jail and ordered to pay greater than $19 million.

He was charged in March 2022 for stealing round $17 million from the iPhone maker by way of mail and wire fraud schemes.

Prasad, 55, from Mountain House in San Joaquin County, pleaded responsible to one depend of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and one depend of conspiracy to defraud the US on November 2, 2022.

The remaining counts have been dismissed at sentencing, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) mentioned in an announcement.

The prison conduct centred round Prasad’s employment at Apple from December 2008 by way of December 2018.

For most of that point, he was a “purchaser” in Apple’s Global Service Supply Chain. It was Prasad’s job as an Apple purchaser to facilitate the method by way of which Apple purchased components to carry out guarantee repairs on older gadgets.

According to the Justice Department, Prasad exploited his place and conspired with two separate Apple distributors to defraud the iPhone maker by taking kickbacks, stealing components, inflating invoices, and inflicting the tech large to pay for gadgets and companies it by no means acquired — leading to a loss to Apple of greater than $17,000,000.

In addition to partaking in two separate prison conspiracies with Apple distributors, Prasad additionally acknowledged that he evaded tax on the proceeds of his schemes.

By advantage of his place at Apple, “Prasad was given substantial discretion to make autonomous selections to profit his employer”.

He abused his energy to enrich himself at his employer’s expense — all whereas accepting hundreds-of-thousands of {dollars} value of compensation from Apple within the type of wage and bonuses.

“Additionally, Prasad used his insider data concerning the corporate’s fraud-detection methods to design his criminalschemes to keep away from detection,” mentioned the DOJ.

(With inputs from IANS)