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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the adventurous-capital dept.

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.

18 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Unaccceptable by dicobalt · · Score: 1

    Off with his head!

  2. It's Just A Small Loan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

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

  3. When you pull of this scam, why stay at home? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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?

  4. Didn't think it through... by linuxguy · · Score: 1

    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?

    1. Re:Didn't think it through... by whoever57 · · Score: 2

      The criminals that are caught are generally not the brightest.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    2. Re:Didn't think it through... by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      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.

    3. Re:Didn't think it through... by mentil · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  5. Good! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Good! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's the big people who get away scot free. Reality Winner is in prison while Hillary Clinton is still at large. The same crime, but the laws only apply to the little people.

      So Hillary went out of her way to give a newspaper classified information? Nope. It should be noted that her own server actually was secure and was never breached. If you want to talk about someone who is being careless with national security, I got a current president that won't even consistently use secure government phones and you can scream about that for a decade. Oh wait, you're a partisan hack, I forgot.

      --
      Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    2. Re:Good! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1, Troll

      Mishandling secret documents is a grave offense, even if nobody broke into the server. Spoiler alert: foreign intelligence agencies were all over it. It was a windows server computer and the program was **Microsoft remote desktop**. No shell requirement to get into her shit. It was that **easy**.

      The only reason the Clintons were not frog marched in cuffs for numerous felonies over the years was the swamp and the fact that the elites in both parties have been covering for each other for decades. Ask any active duty military. If they had done what Hillary did with her email server and classified emails, they would be in jail. Just like Reality Winner. Nearly all politicians are crooked, but to try to claim that the Clintons are not outright mobsters is laughable to anyone who has been paying attention. Hell, Bill Clinton straight up raped several women and got away with it.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:Good! by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Mishandling secret documents is a grave offense,

      Not in general it isn't. It depends on many things like intent, the classification level and compartment (if applicable), severity, and the fallout of doing so. People working behind the fence often screw up. It happens, people are human.

      Generally the penalties aren't severe because mostly nothing gets leaked and really REALLY importantly if the penalties are severe then it's worth people's time to cover it up and hide it rather than come clean. It turns out that people have been running classified things for a while now and they've actually learned how to do it decently well and how to mitigate the annoying fact that everyone involved is human.

      In fact in many cases about the worst that happens is you have to do a training course and all the local rules are tightened a bit.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    4. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's amazing some people have so much faith in CNN.

    5. Re:Good! by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      The only reason the Clintons were not frog marched in cuffs for numerous felonies over the years was the swamp and the fact that the elites in both parties have been covering for each other for decades.

      Blackmail in their world is MAD

      Everybody has insurance

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  6. It's odd by fozzy1015 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:It's odd by King_TJ · · Score: 1

      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.

    2. Re:It's odd by mentil · · Score: 1

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

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    3. Re:It's odd by mentil · · Score: 2

      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'.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  7. Re: God I hate that c6gunner fucker... apk by c6gunner · · Score: 1

    I continue to better myself

    lol