Federal prosecutors allege that a former delivery driver has pleaded guilty to, and confessed to conspiring with others in, orchestrating a scheme involving fraudulent DoorDash orders, siphoning off in excess of $2.5 million via this artifice. Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, entered a guilty plea on Tuesday in a San Jose federal court, admitting culpability for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Federal prosecutors stated that Devagiri, 30, of Newport Beach, California, acknowledged collaborating with three accomplices during 2020 and 2021 to defraud the San Francisco-based meal delivery enterprise. Prosecutors assert that Devagiri exploited customer accounts to place orders of considerable value, subsequently leveraging an employee's credentials to access DoorDash's proprietary software and manually reassigning these orders to driver accounts under his and his confederates' control. Officials stated that Devagiri then manipulated the system to register these fictitious driver accounts as having successfully completed deliveries – which, in reality, never transpired – thereby subverting DoorDash's computer systems into dispensing payments for phantom deliveries to these spurious accounts. Prosecutors further contend that Devagiri, utilising the DoorDash software, would revert the order status from "delivered" back to "processing," effectively recycling the order and enabling its manual reassignment to driver accounts controlled by him and his cohorts, thus perpetuating the fraudulent cycle. The erstwhile delivery operative, no longer affiliated with the company, prosecutors noted, confessed in November 2023 to his participation in the aforementioned scheme, specifically admitting to conspiracy to commit wire fraud within the ambit of the illicit enterprise. Devagiri represents the third defendant to be convicted for involvement in this conspiracy; he faces a maximum sentence of twenty years' imprisonment, a potential fine of $250,000, and is scheduled to reappear in court on September 16th.