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A former Apple employee who swindled the business out of extra than $17 million with a plan that double-billed for parts was sentenced to 3 decades in federal prison and pay back approximately $33 million, prosecutors mentioned.
Dhirendra Prasad pleaded responsible to conspiracy to dedicate fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States in 2022.
Prasad, 55, of Mountain Home, California, labored at Apple from 2008 to 2018 as a customer in the firm’s Global Services Offer Chain unit. Together with two co-conspirators, who owned two companies that have been Apple suppliers, Prasad conspired to double-invoice Apple for areas it already owned or experienced obtained.
Prasad reported the plan commenced as considerably back as 2011. It netted him far more than $17 million and ran for eight years. Prasad also engineered “sham invoices” that permitted one particular of his co-conspirators, Don Baker, to acquire unjustified tax deductions valued at extra than $1.8 million.
“Prasad was supplied sizeable discretion to make autonomous decisions to profit his employer,” federal prosecutors and Interior Earnings Services investigators explained in a statement Wednesday. “Prasad betrayed this trust, and abused his electrical power to enrich himself at his employer’s price.”
In addition to his prison sentence, Prasad will forfeit $5.5 million worth of belongings, shell out a dollars judgment of $8.1 million, and restitution of $17.4 million to Apple and $1.9 million to the IRS.
Apple did not immediately react to a request for remark.