A former DoorDash delivery driver has pleaded guilty to running a scam that cost the company $2.5 million.
The Associated Press reported Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri pleaded guilty in federal court to a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Devagiri said he and three others perpetrated the scam.
Prosecutors said in 2020 and 2021, he would use customer accounts to place expensive orders, then access the DoorDash software using an employee’s login, whom they worked with, to manually change the orders to his and the other people’s driver accounts. Those accounts would report that the orders were delivered, but in reality, they were not. He then made the system pay the fake driver accounts for the deliveries.
While sounding complicated, it took only about five minutes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said.
He then would revert the orders that had been marked delivered to in process and manually reassign them to other driver accounts, then would repeat the process, prosecutors said.
The scam was discovered in 2021 by DoorDash, which turned it over to federal authorities, the newspaper reported.
Two other members of the group pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in November 2023. Two other alleged members of the group have pleaded not guilty, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Devagiri was the third to be convicted and faces up to 20 years behind bars and a $250,000 fine.
Since the scam was found, DoorDash said it has “strengthened” its fraud protection, saying it is “extremely rare.”
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