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Businesses Crime

Tesla Worker Charged With Embezzling More Than $9 Million (siliconvalley.com) 55

An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup: A former Tesla global supply manager was indicted Thursday by federal prosecutors alleging he embezzled more than $9 million from the Palo Alto electric car maker. Salil Parulekar, 32, is charged with felony wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Parulekar oversaw Tesla's dealings with certain auto parts and services vendors, and used that position to divert to a German auto parts company $9.3 million in payments intended for a Taiwanese supplier, according to the indictment. ... Parulekar, who was living in San Jose and working for Tesla in 2016 and 2017, falsified invoices, created fake accounts-payable documents, and impersonated an employee of the Taiwanese supplier to trick Tesla's accounts-payable department into switching the bank account information of the Taiwanese and German companies, the indictment alleged.

That Taiwanese firm's complaints to Tesla about missing money went to Parulekar, who responded by sending fake documents purporting to show the payments were made, the indictment claimed.

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Tesla Worker Charged With Embezzling More Than $9 Million

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  • I didn't know Tesla had that much!

    (cue Rei)

  • Off with his head!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    This is Business 101 at Trump University. He undoubtedly graduated with honors.

  • Surely while pulling off this scam, you are jetting off to a far off land with no extradition treaty back to the USA.

    How did he ever expect this not to be picked up eventually?

  • Instead of paying the Taiwanese supplier, he sent the money somewhere else. How did he think that it would not come back bite him? Was the Taiwanese supplier just going to forget about getting paid?

    • The criminals that are caught are generally not the brightest.

    • by Cyberax ( 705495 )

      Was the Taiwanese supplier just going to forget about getting paid?

      You'd be surprised how much slack exists in dealing between large corporations. Million dollar invoices can legitimately get lost or misrouted.

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      I think he was expecting that noone with power over him would ever find out. The company complains directly to him, he never tells a soul, and effectively buries the complaint.

  • I don't know about you but I want all the frauds to be prosecuted for their crimes. So many are merely swept under the table and it's infuriating.

  • It's odd (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fozzy1015 ( 264592 ) on Saturday November 10, 2018 @09:10PM (#57623724)
    So far, no indication of how he benefitted from the embezzling. He didn't steal money from accounts and run. His behavior has been as if he didn't think he was hurting Tesla. His accounts were removed today but his social media posts showed he was a big drinker of the Tesla kool aid. There's a good chance this scheme went higher than him.
    • by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      I wondered about that too. Unless the German auto parts company was one he had ownership in, it doesn't seem like there would be enough in it for him to take these kinds of risks and go through all the hassles to forge documents claiming the other firm was paid, etc.

      I mean, even if he received kickbacks for getting Tesla to do more business with the German firm instead of the Taiwanese firm? He was on borrowed time, knowing the Taiwanese firm expected to be paid for whatever they supplied.

      • by mentil ( 1748130 )

        Perhaps the Taiwanese company had little liquid capital, and a competitor paid him off to help put them under. $9 million might've been tiny compared to what they would pay for their competitor to be driven to bankruptcy.
        Alternatively, given he seems to hold strong views, it's possible he felt that a German company was more deserving of Tesla's business than a Taiwanese company, and was sending the money 'where it belonged'.

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      Maybe he never quite figured out the '???' step.

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