"The scheme involved the use of fake customer and driver accounts, and the creation of fake orders for which the drivers would be paid using inside access to the backend of DoorDash's systems. The arrestees were 30-year-old Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri and 29-year-old Manaswi Mandadapu, both in Orange County, along with 30-year-old Hari Vamsi Anne of Cypress, Texas, and 29-year-old Matheus Duarte, a Brazilian national who was arrested in Mountain House, California, and who now resides in Hayward."
"Those arrests came after a onetime employee of DoorDash, Dixon, California resident Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn, had already been separately charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a federal criminal case filed in September 2022 clearly after the fraud had been caught by DoorDash. According to federal prosecutors, Bottenhorn had briefly worked for DoorDash in 2020, and used his knowledge of and credentials for the system's backend to launch the scheme."
Five people conspired to create sham driver and customer accounts on DoorDash and place fabricated high-value food orders that never existed. A former DoorDash employee used backend credentials in 2020 to manipulate the system and enable the scheme between 2020 and 2021. Co-conspirators set up fraudulent driver accounts, created fictitious customer accounts, and reassigned orders to controlled drivers to extract payments. The operation resulted in more than $2.5 million in losses. Federal charges were filed in 2022, and additional arrests and sentencing actions occurred through October 2024, including prison terms and restitution orders.
Read at sfist.com
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