DoorDash Driver Made Millions — Until He Got Caught
For many drivers, DoorDash is a good way to make extra cash. But for a driver named Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri, it was a way to make millions. He recently pled guilty to conspiring to steal more than $2.5 million from DoorDash, the San Francisco-based delivery company.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, Devagiri, a 30-year-old resident of Newport Beach, Calif., admitted to working with three other defendants in 2020 and 2021 to cause DoorDash to pay for deliveries that never occurred.
A delivery driver for DoorDash, Devagiri used customer accounts to place high value orders and then, using an employee’s credentials to gain access to DoorDash software, manually reassigned DoorDash orders to driver accounts that he and others controlled. Devagiri then caused the fraudulent driver accounts to report that the orders had been delivered, when they had not, and manipulated DoorDash’s computer systems to prompt DoorDash to pay the fraudulent driver accounts for the non-existent deliveries.
Devagiri would then use DoorDash software to change the orders from “delivered” status to “in process” status and manually reassign the orders to driver accounts he and others controlled, beginning the process again. This procedure usually took less than five minutes, and was repeated hundreds of times for many of the orders.
The former delivery driver faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
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Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
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