A erstwhile purveyor of gastronomic conveyance admitted culpability in a conspiracy to defraud DoorDash of sums exceeding $2.5 million, achieved through the orchestration of phantom deliveries, according to indictments promulgated by federal prosecuting attorneys.

Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri entered a guilty plea on Tuesday in the San Jose federal court to one count of conspiracy to perpetrate wire fraud, as divulged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Devagiri, 30, a Newport Beach, California resident, has conceded his involvement, alongside three accomplices, in a scheme executed throughout 2020 and 2021, designed to defraud a San Francisco-based delivery firm, according to pronouncements from federal prosecuting counsel.

Prosecutors allege that Devagiri exploited customer accounts to initiate substantial orders, subsequently leveraging an employee's credentials to surreptitiously access DoorDash's proprietary software, enabling the clandestine reassignment of said orders to a network of driver accounts under his and his accomplices' dominion; furthermore, Devagiri purportedly orchestrated the fraudulent reporting of non-existent deliveries via these compromised accounts, thereby manipulating DoorDash's computational infrastructure to disburse payments for phantom services, as elucidated by official sources.

Devagiri would then exploit DoorDash's proprietary software, manipulating order statuses from "delivered" to "in process," followed by the surreptitious reassignment of said orders to driver accounts under his or his accomplices' dominion, thereby initiating a fraudulent cycle of pecuniary gain, according to prosecutorial findings.

The erstwhile employee implicated in the fraudulent scheme entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in November 2023, prosecutors stated, further confessing to active participation in the aforementioned illicit enterprise.

Devagiri, the third defendant adjudged culpable for his involvement in the aforementioned conspiracy, now confronts a potential custodial sentence of two decades coupled with a pecuniary penalty extending to $250,000, with his reappearance before the court scheduled for the 16th of September.