By Enyichukwu Enemanna
A former official of Apple, Dhirendra Prasad has been convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a $17 million fraud suffered by the company.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California had announced this in a statement on Monday.
Prasad was ordered to pay more than $17 million to Apple and about $2 million to the Internal Revenue Service.
Additionally, he also will forfeit more than $5 million in assets that the government had already seized, in addition to his prison sentence, Yahoo News had reported.
The 55-year-old Prasad, from Mountain House, California pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the US in November last year.
He worked for Apple from December 2008 to December 2018, spending most of the time serving as a “buyer” who was responsible for facilitating the process for Apple to buy parts for warranty repairs on old devices.
He conspired with two Apple vendors to dupe the company by taking kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating billing statements and getting Apple to pay for items and services it had not received, the release added.
Prasad also acknowledged not paying taxes on the profits he made from the scheme, the release says.
He was initially charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering and later one-count of tax evasion, but they were dismissed at sentencing.
Prasad had “substantial discretion” to make his own decisions to help Apple, but he chose to help himself, the release added.
“Prasad betrayed this trust, and abused his power to enrich himself at his employer’s expense – all while accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of compensation from Apple in the form of salary and bonuses.
“Additionally, Prasad used his insider information regarding the company’s fraud-detection techniques to design his criminal schemes to avoid detection,” the release states.
