How a DoorDash driver scammed the company out $2.5 million

A erstwhile DoorDash transportation operator pleaded blameworthy this week to conspiracy to a ligament fraud conspiracy that scammed DoorDash retired of implicit $2.5 million, the US Attorney’s Office successful California’s Northern District announced connected Tuesday. He and others made it hap implicit a play of months utilizing fake lawsuit accounts, deliveries that ne'er happened, operator accounts, and entree to DoorDash worker credentials.

Here’s however the Attorney’s bureau describes the scheme. The driver, Sayee Chaitainya Reddy Devagiri, placed costly orders from a fraudulent lawsuit relationship successful the DoorDash app. Then, utilizing DoorDash worker credentials, helium manually assigned the orders to operator accounts helium and the others progressive had created. Devagiri would past people the undelivered orders arsenic implicit and punctual DoorDash’s strategy to wage the operator accounts. Then he’d power those aforesaid orders backmost to “in process” and bash it each implicit again. Doing this “took little than 5 minutes, and was repeated hundreds of times for galore of the orders,” writes the US Attorney’s Office.

Devagiri faces up to 20 years successful situation and a $250,000 fine, and is scheduled for a presumption proceeding successful September. He and 4 others were charged successful August for their roles successful the scheme, which prosecutors accidental was carried retired betwixt November 2020 and February 2021. The DoorDash worker whose insider credentials they used, Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn, was charged separately successful 2022 and pleaded blameworthy the pursuing year, the Attorney’s Office wrote successful October.