Former Employee Who Defrauded Apple Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison and $19 Million in Fines

[MacRumors]

Former Apple employee Dhidrenda Prasad was this week sentenced to three years in prison and was ordered to pay more than $17 million in restitution to Apple. Back in November, Prasad pled guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States after stealing millions of dollars from Apple.

Prasad was part of Apple's Global Service Supply Chain department between 2008 and 2018, and his job was to buy parts and services from vendors for servicing older devices. In 2011, Prasad started accepting kickbacks, inflating invoices, and stealing parts, causing Apple to pay for components and services that it did not receive.

Two vendors worked with Prasad to steal money from Apple. His schemes included funneling illicit payments from the vendors to his creditors, tricking Apple into paying for components twice, and stealing components purchased by Apple and reselling them to Apple through his co-conspirators. In total, he was found guilty of stealing $17 million through mail and wire fraud.

He will forfeit nearly $5.5 million in assets that the government has already seized, and will need to pay an additional $8 million in forfeiture money. The $13.5 million forfeiture is on top of the $17 million that he must pay to Apple and the $1.8 million he owes to the IRS for not paying taxes on the money he received from Apple.

After serving three years in prison, he will have another three years of supervised release.

Article Link: Former Employee Who Defrauded Apple Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison and $19 Million in Fines

 

[BGPL]

Defrauding Apple was this guy's first mistake. They are too organized and have a legion of attorneys at their whim. Not to mention Tim's death grip on the purse strings.

 

[Mr. Dee]

Greed! You could have built a decent respectable life, but took a shortcut to get millions of dollars without considering the consequences.

 

[The Cappy]

These cases are always very interesting to me. If I committed a crime and stole $17 million... I can totally understand court saying I had to pay the money back. And maybe if I'm frugal I've still got a bunch of that $17m left. But then telling me I need to pay another $13.5m + $1.8m... Ok, so I don't know how many scams he's got going. But if it was me, I definitely wouldn't be able to pay anybody even $1m. Does the court actually have the lively expectation he'll be able to pay these moneys?

 

[GMShadow]

Defrauding Apple was this guy's first mistake. They are too organized and have a legion of attorneys at their whim. Not to mention Tim's death grip on the purse strings.

And yet it took seven years to notice. Not condoning what he did, but clearly there were issues with the processes he was able to exploit for longer than any accountant or auditor would like.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Good news. I always like seeing the bad person get what is coming to them.

 

[citysnaps]

These cases are always very interesting to me. If I committed a crime and stole $17 million... I can totally understand court saying I had to pay the money back. And maybe if I'm frugal I've still got a bunch of that $17m left. But then telling me I need to pay another $13.5m + $1.8m... Ok, so I don't know how many scams he's got going. But if it was me, I definitely wouldn't be able to pay anybody even $1m. Does the court actually have the lively expectation he'll be able to pay these moneys?

I suspect he'll have to make restitution in amounts beyond what's required to sustain a simple life (the basics: modest rent, food, public transportation, etc). Good luck finding another job with that record.

 

[fromgophonetoiphone]

These cases are always very interesting to me. If I committed a crime and stole $17 million... I can totally understand court saying I had to pay the money back. And maybe if I'm frugal I've still got a bunch of that $17m left. But then telling me I need to pay another $13.5m + $1.8m... Ok, so I don't know how many scams he's got going. But if it was me, I definitely wouldn't be able to pay anybody even $1m. Does the court actually have the lively expectation he'll be able to pay these moneys?

It's likely in financial crimes that if you were able to profit further from your fraud, you need to pay that back too. Given how most assets and financial records can be tracked down, they saw what happened to the money. 2008 thru 2018 and even today has seen massive stock market gains. If he invested that $17 million and it grew, the investigators can probably see that. They can calculate his gains off of stolen assets and that's likely how they determined the penalties on top of the $17 million principal he must return.

Letting him steal $17 million and keep the gains but return the principal would be too good to be true, so that's likely where it comes from. And they probably already audited his finances to death to know what he can and cannot pay.

If you cannot pay it back, then you may declare bankruptcy likely and that's not a pretty picture in the US at least especially if you were at least a moderately successful employee at Apple.

 

[fromgophonetoiphone]

Defrauding Apple was this guy's first mistake. They are too organized and have a legion of attorneys at their whim. Not to mention Tim's death grip on the purse strings.

True but the fact that he got away with it for 10 years before getting caught is pretty ridiculous. If the legion of attorneys and accountants were doing their job they might have caught it earlier... or this guy was good at being a criminal.

 

[Radeon85]

If he wasn't so greedy he may have gotten away with it, 10yrs is a hell of a long time to keep doing it.

 

[spartan1967]

Proper accountability.

 

[Wildkraut]

Well, if i were in his situation, I would simply move to Mexico after the 3 years.

 

[The Barron]

Boo! "You get what you pay for." In this case the guy got what he deserved - prison, ruined lifestyle and a sordid business reputation. Tough! As they saying goes, "You do the crime; you do the time!"

 

[paul4339]

“The $13.5 million forfeiture is on top of the $17 million that he must pay to Apple and the $1.8 million he owes to the IRS for not paying taxes on the money he received from Apple.”

So the IRS still gets paid for the money he made from the stolen Apple components that were sold back to Apple?

 

[7149041]

So the IRS still gets paid

Death & Taxes 😉

 

[Mr. Dee]

And yet it took seven years to notice. Not condoning what he did, but clearly there were issues with the processes he was able to exploit for longer than any accountant or auditor would like.

When you grow to a large size like Apple with that level of yearly revenue, even large sums of cash which are tied up in businesses within the company of this nature, it sometimes escapes the balance sheet of the main business. Its like losing 19 cents out of 20,000.

 

[ronntaylor]

He's getting off too lightly. Should've been closer to the 20-25 years. He'll spend a bit of time in Club Fed and have plenty of good times with the $$$ he has stashed away somewhere beyond reach. A petty criminal would have gotten hammered.

 

[npmacuser5]

These cases are always very interesting to me. If I committed a crime and stole $17 million... I can totally understand court saying I had to pay the money back. And maybe if I'm frugal I've still got a bunch of that $17m left. But then telling me I need to pay another $13.5m + $1.8m... Ok, so I don't know how many scams he's got going. But if it was me, I definitely wouldn't be able to pay anybody even $1m. Does the court actually have the lively expectation he'll be able to pay these moneys?

No expecting the payment. A lean on his assets the rest of his life. The ability of him doing anything financial will be severely limited to just basic life costs. Anything else will be sent to Apple and others. Essentially a life financial penalty. Not to mention, the ability to get another career going, not looking good.

 

[Nsully59]

What a knob.

 

[pubb]

While I don't excuse criminality, this guy stole the equivalent of change lost in Apple's couch cushions and did it nonviolently.

If someone broke into your house and stole a quarter, they wouldn't face such harsh penalties.

 

[Solomani]

Defrauding Apple was this guy's first mistake. They are too organized and have a legion of attorneys at their whim. Not to mention Tim's death grip on the purse strings.

Well..... give this white collar criminal some credit. He worked at Apple for over 10 years, 2008 to 2018. Per article, he started taking kickbacks since 2011. And was only caught and terminated in 2018. That's at least 7 years of corruption and theft.

Apple is a huge company, it has more employees than many small national governments (if you count the nation's government-paid employees). So yeah, I would imagine that Apple still has a handful of crooks and weasels like Prasad contributing to the internal corruption. They just haven't been caught yet.

 

[antnythr]

Perhaps one day we will advance as a society and also start punishing corporations and their executives with exceptionally large, deterrent level fines as well 🙏

 

[t0rqx]

I wonder if this is the reason Apple service parts are of bad quality.

 

[UK-MacAddict]

I think Tim Cook needs to pay back billions in fines to Apple customers he’s skanked by overcharging for every product in the last 5-6 years.

All whilst paying a pittance to the China sweatshops that build the products.

 

[4odomi]

Former Apple employee Dhidrenda Prasad was this week sentenced to three years in prison and was ordered to pay more than $17 million in restitution to Apple. Back in November, Prasad pled guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States after stealing millions of dollars from Apple.

Prasad was part of Apple's Global Service Supply Chain department between 2008 and 2018, and his job was to buy parts and services from vendors for servicing older devices. In 2011, Prasad started accepting kickbacks, inflating invoices, and stealing parts, causing Apple to pay for components and services that it did not receive.

Two vendors worked with Prasad to steal money from Apple. His schemes included funneling illicit payments from the vendors to his creditors, tricking Apple into paying for components twice, and stealing components purchased by Apple and reselling them to Apple through his co-conspirators. In total, he was found guilty of stealing $17 million through mail and wire fraud.

He will forfeit nearly $5.5 million in assets that the government has already seized, and will need to pay an additional $8 million in forfeiture money. The $13.5 million forfeiture is on top of the $17 million that he must pay to Apple and the $1.8 million he owes to the IRS for not paying taxes on the money he received from Apple.

After serving three years in prison, he will have another three years of supervised release.

Article Link: Former Employee Who Defrauded Apple Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison and $19 Million in Fines

Well done APPLE......I hate thieves and fraudsters 😡