Former Apple Employee Dhirendra Prasad of California Charged With Money Laundering and Tax Evasion
- The Indian American is accused of five crimes including engaging in a conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud.
A former Apple employee has been charged with defrauding the multinational technology company of millions of dollars. According to a federal criminal case filed last week in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Dhirendra Prasad, of Mountain House in San Joaquin County, is accused of five crimes.
“In the first count, Prasad is charged with engaging in a conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud from 2013 through January 2019,” according to a Department of Justice press release. “In the second and third counts, he is charged with separate conspiracies to launder fraud proceeds. The fourth count charges him with conspiring to evade a co-conspirator’s tax liabilities for several years, and the fifth count charges him with evading his own income tax liabilities.”
Prasad worked with Apple Inc., from December 2008 through December 2018. For most of that time, the Indian American was a “buyer” in Apple’s Global Service Supply Chain and responsible for purchasing parts and services from vendors on Apple’s behalf, the DoJ said.
While in that post, he engaged in multiple different schemes to defraud Apple, including taking kickbacks, stealing parts, and causing Apple to pay for items and services it never received, resulting in a loss of more than $10,000,000. Prasad also evaded tax on the schemes’ proceeds, which he also laundered, along with his alleged co-conspirators — Robert Gary Hansen and Don M. Baker — both of whom reside in the Central District of California.
Hansen and Baker both owned vendor companies that did business with Apple, and the charges allege they each conspired with Prasad to commit fraud and money laundering. “Neither Hansen nor Baker were charged with Prasad,” the DoJ said, but they were each earlier charged in separate federal criminal cases. Both have admitted their involvement.
In addition, the United States filed a civil forfeiture action related to the criminal charges against Prasad in federal court on Sept. 24, 2021. In that suit, the United States seeks to forfeit five pieces of real property and a dozen financial accounts traced to Prasad’s crimes. Those assets – which have an estimated aggregate value of $5,000,000 – have been frozen or otherwise encumbered under a court-authorized seizure warrant. The civil forfeiture action remains pending.