Delivery driver pleads guilty to defrauding DoorDash of $2.5 million in fake orders

SAN JOSE A former delivery driver pleaded guilty to conspiracy Tuesday in federal court for attempting to steal million from DoorDash by placing orders manually assigning the orders to driver accounts he controlled and falsely marking them as completed according to federal functionaries Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri a -year-old from Newport Beach was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud after being indicted by a federal grand jury alongside three others in August He is the third defendant to be convicted in the incident according to a news release from the U S Attorney s Office for the Northern District of California In and Devagiri worked as a driver for DoorDash which is headquartered in San Francisco prosecutors stated With others he would place high-priced orders from customer accounts then use an employee s credentials to access DoorDash utility and manually reassign those orders to driver accounts held by him and others Using the driver accounts Devagiri would falsely account that those orders had been delivered and cue DoorDash s computer systems to pay the drivers for the fake deliveries prosecutors mentioned He would then manually change the status of the order back to in process reassign them to the driver accounts and repeat the process up to hundreds of times for each order Each process took under five minutes prosecutors added Devagiri s scheme resulted in DoorDash paying out more than million in fraudulent payments prosecutors announced Devagiri was arrested alongside three others on Oct according to the Department of Justice He first appeared in court in Santa Ana and was disclosed on bond Related Articles California prosecutors unseal first ever narco-terrorism indictment against Mexican drug traffickers Federal civil rights trial begins for California cop who shot unarmed fleeing man in back Menendez brothers a step closer to freedom after judge reduces murder sentences Man who killed Oakland city councilmember s son in Los Angeles sentenced to years to life New trial date again set for East Bay woman accused of killing of -year-old Devagiri will appear before U S District Judge Beth Labson Freeman Sept for a status hearing Devagiri faces up to years in prison and a fine Co-defendant Manaswi Mandadapu also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on May prosecutors added Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn of Solano County pleaded guilty on Nov to a separate charge Bottenhorn had briefly worked for DoorDash in and the group accessed the DoorDash computer systems using his credentials prosecutors reported