A former Tesla employee was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday for allegedly embezzling $9.3 million from Elon Musk’s electric car company.
The former employee, Salil Parulekar, began working at Tesla in 2013, according to a LinkedIn page that shares his name. Most recently, he worked as a manager at Tesla’s global supply management group, where he oversaw the company’s relationships with suppliers.
According to the indictment, Parulekar, 32, falsified invoices, created fraudulent account documents, and impersonated supplier employees in order to embezzle millions between 2016 and 2017.
Parulekar allegedly redirected payments intended for Hota Industrial Manufacturing, a Tesla supplier, to an account for Schwabische Huttenwerke Automotive, a supplier with which Tesla no longer worked. By impersonating a Hota employee, the indictment states Parulekar led Tesla’s accounts payable division to switch the bank account information for these two companies.
He faces nine counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. The maximum sentence for each count of wire fraud is 20 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, while the maximum sentence for identity theft is two years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
Tesla declined to comment. Coins2Day attempted to reach Parulekar through LinkedIn, but received no response.