Skip to main content

Salil Parul, Indian American, Former Tesla employee indicted in $9.3M embezzlement scheme

A former Tesla Inc. employee was indicted on Thursday for allegedly stealing $9.3 million from the company by falsifying financial documents to divert payments from one supplier to another.
Salil Parulekar, 32, formerly of San Jose, worked inside Tesla’s Global Supply Management group in 2016 and 2017, when he allegedly hatched a plan to send money owed to Taiwan-based auto parts supplier Hota Industrial Manufacturing to a different supplier, Germany’s Schwäbische Hüttenwerke GmbH, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.
FBI agents investigating the case say they believe Parulekar impersonated a Hota Industrial Manufacturing employee, and sent paperwork to the company’s accounting division asking to change the bank account information from a Hota account to an account controlled by Schwäbische Hüttenwerke.
Parulekar’s LinkedIn profile says he joined Tesla in 2013 as a purchasing specialist, and left the company in late 2017 as the group manager of the Global Supply Management and Industrialization team. Parulekar did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent through his LinkedIn page.
The Department of Justice didn’t say whether employees at Schwäbische Hüttenwerke were aware of the scheme, or why Parulekar allegedly funneled payments to the company’s account. In January 2017, Tesla ended its contract with Schwäbische Hüttenwerke, which had supplied the Palo Alto-based automaker with a “limited number” of sample motor pumps, the Department of Justice said.

A grand jury on Thursday indicted Parulekar, who is facing nine counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. If convicted, each count of wire fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, while the charge of identity theft carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India the most dangerous country to be a woman, US ranks 10th in survey

India the most dangerous country to be a woman, US ranks 10th in survey India the most dangerous country to be a woman, US ranks 10th in survey By  Angela Dewan , CNN Updated 6:51 AM ET, Tue June 26, 2018 Play Video M. Hasna Maznavi: She built a mosque for women 'I'm beautiful, but I'm dangerous' The impact of Clinton's feminism in China Audi ad likens women to used cars in China Women on what feminism is ... and isn't What's a 'menstruation hut'? Saudi music video on women's rights goes viral Women's rights activists in Russia protest law India: Women, class, and discrimination Why does the gender wage gap still exist? The...

Bharatkumar Patel, aka Bharat Patel, 43, an Indian national who had resided in Midlothian, Illinois, and others from AHMEDABAD, Gujarat, AND MUMBAI, India, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas for multi million dollars IRS TAX call center fraud.

According to admissions made in connection with the plea, Patel and his co-conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme in which individuals from call centers located in Ahmedabad, India, impersonated officials from the IRS or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in a ruse designed to defraud victims located throughout the United States. Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, call center operators targeted U.S. victims who were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government. Victims who agreed to pay the scammers were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, and upon payment, the call centers would immediately turn to a network of “runners” based in the U.S. to liquidate and launder the fraudulently-obtained funds. According to his plea, beginning in or about July 2013, Patel worked as a member of a crew of runners operati...

Parimal Mehta, an Indian-American owner and CEO of an IT firm in Detroit has been indicted to bribe a city officials to receive work under MBE/Minority Owned Business Enterprise city contracts

Parimal Mehta, an Indian-American owner and CEO of an IT firm in Detroit has been indicted to bribe a city officials to receive work under MBE/Minority Owned Business Enterprise city contracts. An Indian-American owner and CEO of an IT firm in Detroit has been indicted for his alleged role in orchestrating a scheme to bribe a city official to obtain benefits for his company, the Justice Department said. Parimal D. Mehta, 54, of Northville, Michigan, was charged in a 11-count indictment with five counts of honest services mail and wire fraud, one count of federal programme bribery and five counts of unlawfully using interstate facilities to commit bribery, said Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan on Wednesday. Between 2009 to August 2016, Mehta made multiple cash payments to Charles L. Dodd, the former Director of Detroit's Office of Departmental Technology Services, according to the indictment. This included two cash bribes hand-d...