This fraud was done by accepting bribes, inflating invoices, stealing parts, and forcing Apple to pay for items and services.
A former Apple employee has confessed to defrauding the company of more than $17 million. Dhirendra Prasad, who worked as a buyer in Apple’s global service supply chain for more than a decade, admitted that between 2011 and 2018, he did things like “taking bribes, inflating invoices, stealing parts and “Forcing Apple to pay for items and services it never received” is its scam.
In one of the scams, Prasad shipped Apple motherboards to another company called CTrends, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. The company’s president, Don M. Baker, who previously pleaded guilty to participating in the fraud scheme, removed the desired components from the motherboards, and then Prasad issued purchase orders for those components.
After Baker returned the parts to Apple, CTrends invoiced the tech giant and Prasad handled the payments. In the end, the two forced Apple to pay for their parts and split the proceeds of the fraud.
In addition to stealing from the company, the former Apple employee has also confessed to tax fraud. In addition, he arranged for a shell company to send bogus invoices to CTrends to conceal Baker’s illegal payments to him.
Conviction of former Apple employee
Prasad’s trial will be held in March. He has been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and computer fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Prasad was also convicted of one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. In addition, he has agreed to forfeit approximately 5 million in assets he acquired as a result of these actions, including real estate.
