SJ Man Sentenced To Prison For Bilking Co. With False Invoices

SAN JOSE, CA -- A 41-year-old San Jose man was sentenced Thursday to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay $2.6 million in restitution as result of his mail fraud conviction for embezzling from an East Bay medical device company, U.S. Attorney David L. Anderson announced.

With the assistance of Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett, the sentence handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers culminated a probe into Dinesh Shankar's scheme against an Emeryville-based medical device company from July 2013 to December 2017 while he was employed there.

Shankar pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud on November 1, 2018.

According to the plea agreement, the defendant submitted false expense reports and invoices to the Channel Medsystems' finance department, causing the Horton Street company to pay more than $500,000 in excess of the legitimate expenses and expenditures for services provided to the company, the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI contend. In addition, Shankar admitted he created false invoices that appeared to be issued by six different entities. The entities were actually fictitious business names for entities that Shankar controlled. The defendant also prepared the false invoices to make it appear the 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 $2.5 million.

A federal grand jury indicted Shankar on April 12, 2018, charging him with six counts of mail fraud. When Shankar pleaded guilty to one count, the remaining were dismissed as part of the deal.

In addition to the prison sentence and restitution, the judge also sentenced the defendant to serve a three-year term of supervised release, which he will begin to serve on May 1.