Two men from Dixon and Hayward were sentenced in federal court for their part in a conspiracy to steal over $2.5 million from the food delivery service DoorDash, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
Hayward resident Matheus Duarte, 30, and Dixon resident Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn, 30, worked with three others to get payments from DoorDash for deliveries that never occurred, according to prosecutors.
DoorDash is part of the so-called “gig economy,” where self-employed drivers signed up with the company deliver primarily food or beverages to people who use the app.
Duarte, Bottenhorn and their co-conspirators created fake customer and driver accounts on the DoorDash platform and used the fake customer accounts to place orders for delivery. The orders were then assigned to fraudulent driver accounts.
According to prosecutors, the defendants had insider access to DoorDash’s computer systems and manipulated them to cause the company to pay the fake driver accounts “as if individual orders had been delivered hundreds of times.”
The scheme resulted in fraudulent payments exceeding $2.5 million.
Both men pleaded guilty, including three others: Hari Vamsi Anne, 31, of Cypress, Texas; Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri, 31, of Newport Beach, and Manaswi Mandadapu, 31, of Irvine.
Duarte was given 25 months in federal prison and will serve three years on parole once he is out. He has also been ordered to pay $2.6 million in restitution and must forfeit $336,712. He starts serving his sentence on March 4.
Bottenhorn was sentenced to time-served and three years of parole. He must pay $2.1 million in restitution and forfeit $244,247.