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

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.

Comments

Re:Didn't think it through...

[whoever57]

The criminals that are caught are generally not the brightest.

It's odd

[fozzy1015]

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.

Re:It's odd

[mentil]

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'.