A 45-year-old Franklin man who spent eight years working inside Bridgestone Americas' Nashville headquarters has pleaded guilty to siphoning nearly $15 million from the tire giant through a fake vendor he invented himself. Sajju Khatiwada admitted to two counts of wire fraud in connection with a scheme that ran from August 2020 through April 2024, funneling company money into a shell company designed to look like a legitimate payment processor.
According to WZTV Fox 17 Nashville, Khatiwada worked at Bridgestone from April 2016 until April 2024, holding the title of assistant treasurer for capital planning and funding. In that role, he managed the company's relationships with banks that handled credit card processing for Bridgestone's retail locations nationwide, giving him intimate knowledge of the exact kind of routine bank fees he would later use to disguise his theft.
A Fake Vendor Built to Fool the Books
Khatiwada created a shell company called Paymt-Tech, LLC, registering it in Nevada in July 2020 under someone else's name and opening bank accounts for it that same month, the station's report states. The name was no accident: Paymt-Tech closely echoed Chase Paymentech, a real payment processing vendor owned by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Because Chase Paymentech's actual fees are deducted directly at the point of sale rather than billed separately each month, Bridgestone staff had no independent way to sanity-check the invoices Khatiwada was sending.
Each month between August 2020 and April 2024, Khatiwada emailed fake invoices to Bridgestone employees, per the same account, and the company paid more than $14.9 million into the Paymt-Tech accounts he controlled. Paymt-Tech performed no actual work for Bridgestone at any point. Khatiwada then moved the stolen money into his own financial and investment accounts, where it grew substantially over the life of the scheme.
How the Scheme Unraveled
The fraud stayed hidden until roughly two months after Khatiwada left the company in April 2024, when Bridgestone accounting personnel noticed an unexplained drop in monthly bank fees and started asking questions, according to the Department of Justice. That internal scrutiny eventually led federal investigators back to Khatiwada, and a federal grand jury indicted him in December 2024. Agents arrested him in November of that year, and he made his initial court appearance days later when the criminal complaint was unsealed.
At a detention hearing following his arrest, federal prosecutors argued Khatiwada posed a flight risk in part because he was a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Nepal, a country without a U.S. extradition treaty, even though he had relinquished his Nepali citizenship upon becoming a citizen here. Magistrate Judge Barbara D. Holmes nonetheless granted him conditional pretrial release, according to court records. Court filings noted Khatiwada had lived in the United States for more than 20 years and in Tennessee for eight years, residing in Franklin with his wife and two young children.
Investment Gains Swell the Government's Claim
Rather than simply spending the stolen funds, Khatiwada placed much of the money into market equities and dividend-yielding investments, which generated more than $6.1 million in interest, dividends and other gains on top of the original theft. That growth pushed the total scope of the scheme to about $21 million, and Khatiwada has agreed to forfeit that full amount to the United States. He also owes Bridgestone more than $14.9 million in restitution plus interest, per WZTV's report.
U.S. Attorney Braden H. Boucek, who announced the guilty plea, said Khatiwada abused a position of extraordinary trust to steal nearly $15 million and used the funds to generate millions more in investment gains. Boucek added that corporate position and financial sophistication are not shields from accountability, a pointed message aimed at the kind of white-collar access Khatiwada exploited for years without detection.
What Comes Next
Khatiwada faces up to 20 years in federal prison on each of the two wire fraud counts he pleaded guilty to, for a maximum combined exposure of 40 years. Under federal law, wire fraud prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1343 carries that same 20-year statutory ceiling per count, rising to 30 years if a financial institution is affected, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. His sentencing is scheduled for December 22, 2026.
Bridgestone Americas' corporate headquarters sits inside Bridgestone Tower, the 30-story, 514,000-square-foot downtown Nashville skyscraper that opened in 2017 to consolidate roughly 1,700 to 2,000 corporate employees near Bridgestone Arena. The building changed hands in May 2026 when commercial real estate firm Drawbridge Realty acquired it as a Class AA trophy asset, with Bridgestone Americas continuing to occupy the entire tower as its headquarters. It remains unclear whether Bridgestone has since overhauled its vendor verification procedures in the wake of the fraud, or exactly how any restitution will be divided against the government's $21 million forfeiture claim.
