Apple Employee Pleads Guilty To $17M Fraud
Dhirendra Prasad, 52, of Mountain House, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Prasad worked for Apple from 2008 to 2018 for their Global Service Supply Chain department. He used his position to take kickbacks, inflate invoices and steal parts and he caused Apple to pay for items or services it never received, the Department of Justice said.Involved in his scheme were two business owners from central California, Robert Gary Hansen and Don M. Baker . Each of the men owned vender companies that engaged in business with Apple ; they have been charged in separate federal cases and have pleaded guilty as well. The DOJ outlined Prasad’s crimes. In 2013, he had motherboards shipped from Apple ‘s inventory to Baker’s company, CTrends. Baker had the components of the motherboards harvested and Prasad arranged for Apple to issue purchase orders for those components. Baker would ship the components back to Apple and submit an invoice, thus charging the computer giant for its own parts. Prasad facilitated those sales through Apple , which paid the fraudulent invoices, and he and Baker would split the profit.Prasad’s involvement with Hansen was similar. In 2016, Prasad arranged to have components from Apple inventory sent to Hansen’s business, Quality Electronics Distributors, Inc. Hansen would receive the components, take them out of their packaging and put them in new packaging and then ship them back to Apple . Prasad would create a purchase order for the components, Hansen submitted invoices for them, and they split the profit. The Internal Revenue Service was also defrauded of $1.8 million due to the illegal and illicit payments that were being made in this case.The government has seized $5 million in assets from Prasad. Copyright © 2022 Bay City News , Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News , Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area .
Involved in his scheme were two business owners from central California, Robert Gary Hansen and Don M. Baker. Each of the men owned vender companies that engaged in business with Apple; they have been charged in separate federal cases and have pleaded guilty as well. In 2016, Prasad arranged to have components from Apple inventory sent to Hansen’s business, Quality Electronics Distributors, Inc. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
