A former Apple employee has been sentenced to three years in prison and has also been ordered to pay Apple $19 million after stealing $17 million from the company. 55-year-old Dhirendra Prasad was charged in March 2022 and in November he pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Apple and related tax crimes. The sentencing took place on Friday.
Prasad worked for Apple from 2008 to 2018 as a buyer purchasing parts and services for the tech giant’s global service supply chain. In his written plea agreement, Prasad said that he started stealing money from Apple in 2011 via kickbacks, inflating invoices, stealing parts, and charging Apple for parts that were never delivered. These actions resulted in a loss to Apple of $17 million.
Prasad conspired with the owners of two vendor companies who both were charged separately. Prasad also didn’t pay taxes on the money he stole from Apple adding to his charges. The Justice Department explained (via The Verge) that Prasad’s job as an Apple buyer had him purchasing parts used for the repairs of older devices that were still under warranty. His position at Apple gave him discretion to make certain decisions that were supposed to help Apple.
The Justice Department said, “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 sentence was handed down by the Hon. Beth L. Freeman, a United States District Judge, who ordered Prasad to pay $17,398,104 to Apple and $1,872,579 to the IRS. Besides this amount, which adds up to $19,270,683, Judge Freeman said that Prasad must give up assets valued at $5,491,713 (which have already been seized by the government) and turnover cash in the amount of $8,133,005.
