Ex-Apple employee sentenced to three years in prison after $17 million fraud scheme

A former Apple employee who pled guilty to defrauding the company out of over $17 million has been sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to repay his ill-gotten gains. Dhirendra Prasad, who primarily worked as a buyer in Apple's Global Service Supply Chain department during his time at the company, admitted to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States in November. As iMore notes, two charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering were dismissed during sentencing.

Prasad joined Apple in 2008 and carried out his schemes between 2011 and 2018. According to the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, he conspired with two vendors to conduct fraud against Apple by "taking kickbacks, stealing parts, inflating invoices and causing Apple to pay for items and services it never received." Prasad is said to have used his insider knowledge of Apple's fraud detection practices to avoid being caught for several years.

The government has already seized $5.5 million worth of assets from Prasad, who a judge ordered to pay an additional forfeiture money judgment of $8.1 million. On top of that sum and the $17.4 million Prasad has been told to give back to Apple, he was ordered to pay $1.9 million to the Internal Revenue Service — he conceded that he did not pay tax on the proceeds of his schemes. Following Prasad's time in prison, he will have to serve three years of supervised release.