indica News Bureau-
Indian American has been sentenced to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay $2,618,000 in restitution as a result of his mail fraud conviction, announced United States Attorney David L. Anderson and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in charge, John F. Bennett in California.
The sentence was handed down by the honorable, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, United States District Judge on February 28.
San Jose resident, Dinesh Shankar, 41, an owner of an East Bay medical device company, in the San Francisco Bay Area, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in November of last year.
According to the plea agreement, from March 2013 until January 2018, Shankar was an employee of an Emeryville-based medical device company, Channel Medsystems Inc. He was hired as the director of quality assurance but later promoted to the vice president of quality assurance.
Beginning in July 2013 until December 2017, Shankar submitted false expense reports and false invoices to the company’s finance department, causing the company to pay more than half a million dollars in excess of the legitimate expenses and expenditures for services provided to the company.
According to the court document, Shankar had filed fictitious documents, had six fictitious business names, and had signature authority over each account. He also maintained six US postal service post office boxes and rented at private mail providers in Campbell, Santa Clara, and San Jose.
In addition, Shankar admitted he created false invoices that appeared to be issued by six different entities. These entities were actually fictitious business names for entities that he controlled.
Shankar prepared the false invoices to make it appear that these entities had provided testing and quality assurance services to his employer when, in fact, they had not provided the services. Shankar admitted he caused a total loss to the company of about $2,576,384.
A federal grand jury indicted Shankar on April 12, 2018, charging him with six counts of mail fraud. However, he pleaded guilty to one count and the remaining counts were dismissed.
In addition to the prison sentence and restitution, Judge Rogers also sentenced Shankar to serve a three-year term of supervised release. The defendant will begin serving the sentence on May 1, 2019.
