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

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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.

Apple Logo Cash Orange
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.

Top Rated Comments

Mr. Dee Avatar
Mr. Dee
38 months ago
Greed! You could have built a decent respectable life, but took a shortcut to get millions of dollars without considering the consequences.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
F
fromgophonetoiphone
38 months ago

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.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BGPL Avatar
BGPL
38 months ago
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.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Apple_Robert Avatar
Apple_Robert
38 months ago
Good news. I always like seeing the bad person get what is coming to them.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
GMShadow Avatar
GMShadow
38 months ago

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.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
T
The Cappy
38 months ago
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?
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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