US prosecutors say the defendant and his co-conspirators have paid for delivery that never happened to the company.
The former food delivery driver pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal more than $2.5 million from food delivery service Doordash.
Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri pleaded guilty in federal court in San Jose, California on Tuesday, pleading a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. Attorneys’ Office said.
Devagiri and his co-conspirators will have the company pay for delivery that never happened, federal prosecutors said.
Devagiri, 30, of Newport Beach, California, admitted to working with three other people in 2020 and 2021 to fraudulent the San Francisco-based delivery company, federal prosecutors said. The other three were indicted by the Federal University Ju trial in August.
Prosecutors said Devagiri will use customer accounts to place high-value orders, use employee credentials to gain access to Doordash software, and manually reassign orders to driver accounts managed by him and others. He then reported to the fraudulent driver account that the order was delivered when the order was not received and stated that he would operate Doordash’s computer system to pay for fraudulent driver accounts for non-existent delivery.
DeVagiri then uses Doordash software to change the order from “delivered” status to “process” status, manually reassigning it to a driver account controlled by him and others, and restarting the process, prosecutors said.
Devagiri is the third defendant to plead guilty to playing a role in the conspiracy. Authorities say the two co-defendants have previously pleaded to one of the conspiracies to commit wire fraud.
Manaswi Mandadapu pleaded guilty this month, and Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn pleaded guilty in November 2023. Bottenhorn was charged separately.
Devagiri faces a maximum sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 fine in prison. He is scheduled to return to court on September 16th.