A former food delivery driver has pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud DoorDash of over $2.5 million by leveraging phantom orders to illicitly induce payments from the company, according to allegations levelled by federal prosecutors.

Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri entered a guilty plea on Tuesday in a San Jose federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as per the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Devagiri, age 30, of Newport Beach, California, has conceded to federal prosecutors that he colluded with three accomplices throughout 2020 and 2021 in a scheme to defraud a San Francisco-based logistics corporation, according to indictments.

According to prosecutors, Devagiri leveraged customer accounts to initiate high-value orders, subsequently exploiting an employee’s credentials to illicitly access DoorDash's proprietary software and manually reassign these orders to driver accounts under his and his accomplices' dominion; Devagiri then purportedly orchestrated the fabrication of delivery confirmations by these fraudulent driver accounts, despite the non-execution of said deliveries, thereby manipulating DoorDash's computing infrastructure to disburse payments to these fictitious driver accounts for phantom orders, officials allege.

Subsequently, Devagiri allegedly exploited DoorDash's software by manipulating order statuses from "delivered" to "in progress," then surreptitiously reassigning these orders to driver accounts under his and his accomplices' dominion, thereby initiating a fraudulent cycle *ab ovo*, according to prosecutorial claims.

The erstwhile employee, implicated in the fraudulent scheme, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, acknowledging his complicity in the alleged machinations, as asserted by the prosecuting attorneys.

Devagiri, the third defendant convicted for his complicity in the aforementioned conspiracy, faces a potential sentence of up to twenty years' incarceration and a fine not exceeding $250,000 USD; his next court appearance is slated for September 16th.