San Jose Resident Sentenced To 33 Months In Prison For Embezzlement Of An Emeryville Company

Defendant ordered to pay over $2.6 million in restitution

OAKLAND – Dinesh Shankar was sentenced today to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay $2,618,000 in restitution as result of his mail fraud conviction for embezzling from an East Bay medical device company, announced United States Attorney David L. Anderson and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett.  The sentence was handed down by the Honorable Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, United States District Judge.

Shankar, 41, of San Jose, Calif., pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud on November 1, 2018.  According to the plea agreement, from March 2013 until January 2018, Shankar was an employee of an Emeryville-based medical device company.  Beginning in July 2013 until December 2017, the defendant 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.  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.  Shankar 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 $2,576,384.

A federal grand jury indicted Shankar on April 12, 2018, charging him with six counts of mail fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341.  Shankar pleaded guilty to one count and the remaining counts were dismissed. 

In addition to the prison sentence and restitution, Judge Gonzalez Rogers also sentenced the defendant to serve a three-year term of supervised release.  The defendant will begin serving the sentence on May 1, 2019.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lloyd Farnham is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Bridget Kilkenny and Claudia Hyslop. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the FBI.