Newport Beach DoorDash driver helped cheat company out of $2.5 million using phantom deliveries
Working as a DoorDash delivery driver is not an obvious path to wealth. But a Southern California man and his co-conspirators devised an elaborate ruse — involving a boatload of fake orders and manipulation of the company's software — that netted them millions, prosecutors say.
A Newport Beach man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to steal more than $2.5 million from the San Francisco-based food delivery company, officials from the U.S. attorney's office announced.
Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri, 30, admitted he worked with several others in a scheme to cause DoorDash to pay for deliveries that never occurred.
Devagiri faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. He is scheduled to appear in court for a status hearing Sept. 16.
Devagiri, who was a DoorDash driver, and three others worked together from November 2020 to February 2021 and conspired with a former employee of the company to gain access to its computer systems, prosecutors say.
The crew created fake customer and driver accounts. First, they would charge high-dollar orders to customer accounts, then — using the credentials of the employee they were working with — they would manually reassign orders to driver accounts that they controlled.
The fake driver accounts would report the status of the fictitious orders as delivered, causing a payment to go through to those driver accounts.
They would then further manipulate DoorDash's software to toggle the status of the fake orders from 'delivered' to 'in progress.'
From there, they'd reassign the order to another driver account they controlled. This triggered multiple payments on an individual, nonexistent order. Officials said the process usually took less than five minutes, and was repeated hundreds of times for many of the orders.
Devagiri was indicted alongside Manaswi Mandadapu, 29, Matheus Duarte, 29, and Hari Vamsi Anne, 30. Mandadapu pleaded guilty to the same charge as Devagiri on May 6. Anne and Duarte previously pleaded not guilty and are next set to appear in court July 22.
The former employee in the scam, Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in November 2023 and admitted to being involved in the scheme.
It's unclear how the defendants knew one another, or how they connected with Bottenhorn.
Times staff writer Clara Harter contributed to this report.
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