A former Apple employee faces up to 25 years in prison, after pleading guilty to charges of mail and wire fraud, costing the tech giant $17 million dollars over the span of 10 years.
The ex-employee, Dhirendra Prasad, admitted to taking kickbacks, stealing parts, and causing Apple to pay for items and services never received, resulting in a huge financial loss for the company.
The news comes after a year of multiple financial hits to the iOS provider, including multiple security breaches and data violation fines.
Ten Years of Defrauding Apple: How It Was Done
Prasad, who was employed by Apple as a Global Service Supply Chain buyer from 2008 to 2018, admitted to multiple counts of fraud dating back as early as 2011. In his written plea, Prasad confessed to teaming up with vendor owners, Robert Gary Hansen and Don M. Baker – who did business with Apple directly, to defraud the company in a number of ways and split the profit. Here’s how it went down:
Stealing, intercepting and selling back Apple it’s own inventory
In several schemes, Prasad admitted to reselling Apple its own components by shipping motherboards from Apple’s Global Service Supply Chain inventory to his co-conspirators company to have the components harvested, and then arranging for the harvested components to be purchased by Apple – selling their own inventory back to them, and splitting the costs.
In another case, Prasad arranged for components to be shipped to his co-conspirators warehouse, where the items were removed and placed in new packaging, to fulfil fraudulent purchase orders made by Prasad under Apple’s name.
Funneling illicit payments from his co-conspirators directly to his creditors
In another scheme, Prasad admitted to arranging a shell company to issue fake invoices, in order to conceal Baker’s illicit payments to Prasad, allowing Baker to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars of false tax deductions, causing an IRS loss of more than $1.8 million.
The Consequences of Apple Fraud
As a result, the United States has issued a civil forfeiture of assets acquired by Prasad with the fraudulent proceeds, including multiple real estate properties and multiple accounts containing funds traced back to his crimes.
Prasad now faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and five years for one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Both Hansen and Baker admitted their involvement and were charged in separate federal criminal cases earlier this year.
