A 52-year-old California man took kickbacks, inflated invoices, stole parts, and made Apple pay for services the company never received.
Dhirendra Prasad, who Apple employed for a decade, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to defraud, the US Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of California said.
Authorities claim Prasad was a buyer in Apple’s Global Service Supply Chain, responsible for purchasing parts and services for Apple from various vendors.
“Prasad admitted he began to defraud Apple as early as 2011 by taking kickbacks, inflating invoices, stealing parts, and causing Apple to pay for items and services never received,” the Attorney's office said in a statement.
Various schemes operated by Prasad continued until 2018 and resulted in Apple losing over $17 million. However, Prasad implied that he was not working on the scheme alone, saying that two California residents, Robert Gary Hansen and Don M. Baker helped him to defraud Apple.
“In 2013, he [Prasad] had motherboards shipped from Apple’s inventory to Baker’s company, CTrends. Baker arranged to have the motherboards’ components harvested, and Prasad arranged for Apple to issue purchase orders for those harvested components,” reads the statement.
Another example of fraudulent actions included shipping Apple components to a business owned by Hansen. The components were removed from the packaging, placed in new packaging, and shipped back to Apple.
“Prasad created purchase orders for the components, and Hansen submitted invoices to Apple for them, thus billing Apple for its own components,” the authorities claim.
Prasad agreed to forfeit assets associated with committed crimes worth $5M to the United States.
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