California man pleads guilty to scamming DoorDash out of $2.5M
A Southern California man has pleaded guilty for his role in a scheme that stole more than $2 million from San Francisco-based food delivery company DoorDash, federal prosecutors said.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, 30-year-old Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri of Newport Beach in Orange County admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a San Jose court. Devagiri and three others were indicted by a federal grand jury in August and were arrested in October.
Prosecutors said Devagiri, who was a DoorDash delivery driver, worked with others in the scheme in which the company paid for deliveries that never occurred. The scheme took place in 2020 and 2021.
In the scheme, Devagiri used customer accounts to place high value orders on the app. He then used an employee's credentials to gain access to DoorDash software and manually reassigned orders to driver accounts he and others controlled.
Devagiri then used fraudulent driver accounts to report the orders were actually delivered when they were not. He also manipulated the company's computer systems to pay the fraudulent driver accounts for non-existent deliveries.
After that, Devagiri would use DoorDash software to change the orders from "delivered" status to "in process", manually reassigning the orders to drivers he and others controlled and restarting the process.
"This procedure usually took less than five minutes, and was repeated hundreds of times for many of the orders," the .
Prosecutors said the scheme led to more than $2.5 million in fraudulent payments.
Two others connected to the scheme have already been convicted.
Co-defendant Manaswi Mandadapu pled guilty to the same charge on May 6. A third defendant, Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn of Solano County, pled guilty in 2023 after being separately charged in the case.
Devagiri faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. He is scheduled to appear for a status hearing in the case on Sep. 16.
