A Hayward resident is among five people who just learned the hard way that fake takeout does not pay. All five were sentenced in federal court this week for a “phantom orders” scam that drained more than $2.5 million from DoorDash. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman imposed prison terms that range from time served up to 25 months and ordered restitution along with forfeiture of assets tied to the fraud. The case stems from a 2020 to 2021 operation that used bogus customer and driver accounts plus insider access to trigger automated payouts for deliveries that never happened.
According to KRON4, Matheus Duarte, described as a Brazilian national living in Hayward, received a 25 month prison sentence. KRON4 reports that co-defendants Hari Vamsi Anne was sentenced to 22 months, Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri to 21 months, and Manaswi Mandadapu to 12 months, while Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn was sentenced to time served. The court also ordered forfeiture and restitution tied directly to the fraudulent scheme.
How the scam worked
Federal prosecutors say the crew set up fake customer and driver profiles, then used stolen employee credentials to break into DoorDash’s internal tools. Once inside, they repeatedly reassigned high value orders and marked them as delivered in order to trigger payments. Investigators say the group ran the same loop over and over: mark an order as delivered, collect payment, reset the order status back to “in process,” then do it again. Each cycle usually took less than five minutes and was repeated hundreds of times between November 2020 and February 2021, according to filings from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Jose.
As detailed by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of California, the conspirators exploited insider access to manually reassign orders and reset their statuses, cycling the same orders again and again. That manipulation ultimately produced more than $2.5 million in fraudulent payouts.
Sentences, restitution and forfeiture
KRON4 reports that the defendants were ordered to repay DoorDash for losses of about $2.59 million and to forfeit hundreds of thousands of dollars connected to the proceeds and accounts used in the fraud. KRON4 notes that some defendants face forfeiture amounts in the mid hundred thousand dollar range and that all five will be subject to three years of supervised release after completing their prison terms. The judge also entered forfeiture judgments against driver accounts and other assets used to process the fraudulent orders, according to the outlet.
Legal context
Prosecutors say the defendants pleaded guilty or otherwise admitted involvement in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud, a federal charge under 18 U.S.C. § 1349 that carries a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison and financial penalties. The case was brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, with investigative work by the FBI. Court filings from the U.S. Attorney’s Office lay out the timeline of the conspiracy, the technical methods used to compromise DoorDash’s systems, and the scope of the resulting losses.
Why it matters for DoorDash and drivers
DoorDash has said it fired the employees involved, referred the matter to law enforcement and continued to tighten anti fraud safeguards across its platform. In an earlier statement about the case, the company framed the prosecutions as part of a broader push to protect its service and hold bad actors accountable. Local coverage has pointed to the scheme as one more example of how gig economy platforms remain tempting targets, with fraudsters willing to exploit both user accounts and internal tools when they can get access.
