A delivery driver pleaded guilty on May 13 to defrauding more than $2.5 million from the San Francisco-based DoorDash delivery company, according to federal prosecutors.
Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri, a 30-year-old Newport Beach resident, and three others were indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2024 with a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said in a statement.
Federal prosecutors said Devagiri admitted to working with others in 2020 and 2021 to cause DoorDash to pay for deliveries that never occurred. Under the scheme, Devagiri reportedly used customer accounts to place high value orders and then, using an employee’s credentials to gain access to company software, reassigned orders to driver accounts that he and others controlled.
Devagiri then used the fraudulent driver accounts to report that the orders had been delivered, when they had not, and manipulated DoorDash’s computer systems to prompt it to pay the driver accounts for the non-existent deliveries.
Using DoorDash’s software, Devagiri would then change the orders from “delivered” status to “in process” status and manually re-assign the orders to driver accounts he and others controlled, starting the process again.
Authorities said this scheme usually took less than five minutes, and was repeated hundreds of times for many of the orders, resulting in hoax payments exceeding $2.5 million.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Devagiri is the third person to be convicted for his role in this conspiracy. Manaswi Mandadapu pleaded guilty on May 6 and Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn, who was separately charged, pleaded guilty in 2023.
Prosecutors said Devagiri faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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