stealing

Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), the battered lead of Darren Aronofsky’s grimy trifle “Caught Stealing,” has made two major mistakes. First, he saved a cow. Second, he agreed to watch a cat. Swerving his car around the cow and into a pole wrecked Hank’s promising professional baseball career. The cat-sitting happens after Hank moves across the country from California to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he works the closing shift at a dive bar. Before this slacker mama’s boy can crack open a can of Fancy Feast, two toughs come looking for the cat’s actual owner, his neighbor, a mohawked rocker named Russ (Matt Smith). Failing to find their real target, they beat Hank until he loses a kidney.

Then, the truly awful stuff starts. “Caught Stealing,” adapted by Charlie Huston from their novel of the same name, is a bruising bacchanal that celebrates grotty New York City in 1998, when the World Trade Center still stood tall and tech geeks were still mostly broke nerds with jobs no one understands. Duane (George Abud), the drippy programmer across the hall, keeps yelling at Hank and his steady fling, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), a party girl paramedic, that he has to wake up in the morning to build websites. They snicker like Duane couldn’t be more lame.

Thanks to the cat, Hank has blundered into a crime caper that will bring gallons of blood and vividly sketched goons to his door: Russian thugs Pavel (Nikita Kukushkin) and Alekset (Yuri Kolokonikov), Hassidic hitmen Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio) and a Puerto Rican club owner named Colorado (Benito Martinez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny). Hank doesn’t know what these hoods want and he’s aching to get them off his back. He’s also getting hounded by NYPD Detective Roman (Regina King), a hard-nosed veteran of Alphabet City who is unconvinced that Hank is tangled up in this messy business simply because of bad luck.

Everything onscreen has been coated in graffiti, booze or bodily fluids. “Caught Stealing” would be torture to watch in Smell-O-Vision. Aronofsky clearly adores this colorful pre-millennial cesspool, even if the characters in the movie are already grumbling that Rudy Giuliani is scrubbing the life out of the place. Hank blames the mayor’s new rules when he has to stop a pack of college kids from dancing in the bar. He may just also hate Smash Mouth. The film prefers the sleazy, energetic sounds of composer Rob Simonsen and a soundtrack weighted toward the British post-punk band the Idles.

Huston has changed the characters to better suit a hyper-local vibe, reworking the book’s pair of cowboys into Schreiber and D’Onofrio’s devout Jewish brothers who detour mid-assassination to visit their mother (an adorable, Yiddish-speaking Carole Kane) on Shabbos. (The actors are so hidden under their beards that it took me half the movie to spot Schreiber’s nose.) Hank’s attempts to escape them and his other pursuers sends the camera climbing up an alleyway, whirling through a Russian wedding and vaulting across the fish tanks at an Asian grocery store, where he gets out of one dragnet by sliding under a bucket of live crabs.

It’s the kind of intimate tour of New York that usually gets called a love letter to the city, except the corners Aronofsky likes have so much grime and menace and humor that it’s more like an affectionate dirty limerick. He can’t resist adding a cockroach to the opening titles. Even in a moment of respite, when Roman takes Hank to a late-night diner for her favorite black and white cookie, the director has instructed the server to hurl the plate at her dismissively. That rude clatter is his equivalent of a sonnet.

Butler’s Hank is dog-paddling through life: a self-loathing failure just trying to keep his head above water. The former high school hero is still coasting on his charisma and only starting to realize how little he’ll have once he loses his looks and life-of-the-party bonhomie. He’s also an alcoholic — “Breakfast of champions,” he says as he chugs beer for breakfast — which adds to the strain when Yvonne warns him that a guy with one kidney needs to lay off the sauce. He doesn’t and learns the hard way that it’s tough to think when you’re hungover. As we’re with hazy Hank in every scene but one, the tone can feel lax, but editors Justin Allison and Andrew Weisblum are great at cutting together a bender.

Hank and Yvonne are hot for each other at 4 a.m. and cooler in the afternoon when they finally roll out of bed, in part because she claims she can’t get serious about someone who spends his life running. Alas, he’ll also have to spend the rest of the film running and when his apartment building feels unsafe, he doesn’t know anywhere else to go but a bar. Stumbling out of one saloon and down the sidewalk past Kim’s Video (now shuttered, R.I.P.), you can practically hear Aronofsky pleading to let him rent a movie and have a quiet night in. Meanwhile, characters keep hammering Hank about whether he’s a real killer; the actual definition becomes semantic. The truth is, Hank doesn’t think at all about who he is, or could become — only of the jock he was — which is the core of his problem.

In flashbacks, Butler glows with the promise of youth. Joy-riding with his friend Dale (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai), he humblebrags that the Major League won’t draft him any higher than 15th place. Nightmares about their car accident happen pretty much every time Hank closes his eyes, each one jolting us with the sound of a loud cracking bat. We wince whenever the film leaps from Hank’s fresh-faced past to his throbbing present, especially when he sprints and we fear he’ll pop a stitch.

Even the cat, Bud (a long-haired tortiseshell beauty named Tonic), will wind up limping on three paws and making your heart break. Don’t worry, Aronofsky only shows a few frames of that and nothing of the assault, instead letting Bud spend much of the film with his sweet head poking out of a gym bag. The cat is so impossibly patient about never getting any food or water that his breed must be half-Maine Coon, half-camel.

Aronofsky approached Huston about adapting “Caught Stealing” over a decade and a half ago, around the time he made “Black Swan.” The director’s reputation has been so tethered to ambitious (even pretentious) Oscar-caliber material that even as we get invested in whether dopey Hank can save his own neck — or, at least, the cat’s — the back of our brain is busily wondering what’s drawn him to a story that’s simply a good yarn? He must love the hectic and scuzzy New York classics that launched a generation of great filmmakers in the ’60s and ’70s. Then you think about how in 1998 — a year Aronofsky must have chosen, since the novel itself is set in 2000 — he was roughly Hank’s age and releasing his breakthrough movie “Pi,” shot on location nearby.

At a glance, his first film and his latest one feel worlds different even though they’re tramping around the same streets (and even though Aronofsky has remained loyal to his cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who gives these goings-on a rich and gritty texture). But across his career, Aronofsky has remained fixated on the burden of talent. His movies are almost always about characters at risk of squandering their potential, be they ballerinas, wrestlers, mathematicians or baseball players. Beyond guns, the biggest threat to Hank’s well-being is knowing that he nearly did something great with his life and didn’t. Meanwhile, just around the corner, young Aronofsky himself did something great — and then realized audiences expected him to keep overachieving for the rest of his career.

In that context, “Caught Stealing” feels like Aronofsky’s own pressure release. All the way through the end credits, it just wants to entertain. If this was a director’s debut film, people would praise it to the top of the Empire State Building. That it feels a tad underwhelming compared to the rest of his work is on us (and it’s still leagues better than “The Whale”). Perhaps it’s crossed Aronofsky’s mind that if audiences do dig the fluky adventures of Hank Thompson, Huston has written two more books in the series. Perhaps like Hank himself, he doesn’t want to think too far into the future.

THIS is the shocking moment a Deliveroo rider pretends to drop off a takeaway — only to swipe it back seconds later after being caught on camera.

The sham delivery was filmed in Bristol, where stunned homeowner Daniel Ali, 19, watched the bizarre scam unfold on his doorbell camera on August 18.

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The footage shows the courier placing the meal on the doormat and snapping a photo for “proof”, before stuffing it back in his bag and cycling away.

Ali said: “It was a crazy experience,” after sharing the footage on TikTok, where it quickly racked up thousands of views.

The stunned customer later revealed the rider got in touch after the footage blew up online, apologising and begging for the viral video to be taken down.

Viewers were left fuming with one saying: “Absolutely disgusting, he should be banned.”

Another raged: “This is theft, plain and simple.”

Furious social media users warned the stunt could leave vulnerable people hungry, with some relying on deliveries for their only hot meal of the day.

Calls mounted for Deliveroo to act fast.

The firm has since refunded the cost of the food, and Ali has agreed to remove the video.

A Deliveroo spokesperson told Bristol World said: “Deliveroo is committed to ensuring the highest standards of behaviour and we take customer experience extremely seriously.

“We offboarded the rider and issued a refund to the customer after they alerted us to this incident.”

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The 51-year-old, from Scotland, was reported to Italian authorities after a guide spotted him “picking up pieces of Pompeii pavement” during an evening tour

A British tourist caught stuffing six forbidden fragments from Pompeii in his backpack faces a huge fine.

The 51-year-old, from Scotland, was reported to Italian authorities after a guide spotted him “picking up pieces of pavement” during an evening tour on Thursday. He had illegally collected the stones from the ancient Roman archaeological site.

He was caught outside the Pompeii excavation site near the Villa dei Misteri EAV station. Fortunately, the items were recovered and returned to the park.

“He said he had no idea it was forbidden to remove artefacts from Pompeii,” a police officer said. “He was trying to get out of trouble but it did not work. It is pretty easy to understand you cannot do that because if everyone wandered off with a piece of Pompeii there would be nothing left,” he added.

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The unnamed man now faces a fine of over £1,200 and could face up to six years in prison if he is summoned to court.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, said: “Congratulations and thanks to the attentive tour guide, to our excellent custodians and security staff, and to the Carabinieri for this collaborative effort to protect our heritage.”

Pompeii is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world, with 2.5 million tourists visiting each year. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. hit Pompeii, burying it under volcanic ash.

It comes after a mosaic panel on travertine slabs, depicting an erotic theme from the Roman era, was returned to the archaeological park of Pompeii last month, after being stolen by a Nazi German captain during World War II.

The artwork was repatriated from Germany through diplomatic channels, arranged by the Italian Consulate in Stuttgart, Germany, after having been returned from the heirs of the last owner, a deceased German citizen.

The owner had received the mosaic as a gift from a Wehrmacht captain, assigned to the military supply chain in Italy during the war.

The mosaic — dating between mid- to last century B.C. and the first century — is considered a work of “extraordinary cultural interest,” experts said.

“It is the moment when the theme of domestic love becomes an artistic subject,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and co-author of an essay dedicated to the returned work. “While the Hellenistic period, from the fourth to the first century B.C., exulted the passion of mythological and heroic figures, now we see a new theme.”

FOUR children have been detained after allegedly stealing a car and mowing down an elderly woman before fleeing the scene.

Cecilia De Astis, 71, died after being struck by an out-of-control vehicle while walking in the Italian city of Milan on Monday.

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The grandma had just left a lunch at the “House of Solidarity” – run by the Brothers of St. Francis – in her local Gratosoglio neighbourhood when the tragic incident occurred, reports Italian outlet La Stampa.

Local police took four children – aged between 11 and 13 – into custody on suspicion of vehicular homicide aggravated by failure to provide assistance.

The children were identified by the T-shirts they were wearing, which had been caught on surveillance cameras from a nearby shop.

Under Italian law, children under 14 are not criminally liable.

The minors were tracked down at a Roma settlement on Via Selvanesco, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano.

The stolen Citroën reportedly skidded, crashed into a curb and struck De Astis – throwing her several metres into the air – before slamming into a nearby road sign.

The impact was said to have been devastating – despite emergency services’ quick arrival, nothing could be done to save the woman.

Her sons, Gaetano and Filippo, arrived at the scene shortly afterwards and collected the few belongings left scattered on the road – including the face of their mum’s wristwatch.

Originally from Puglia, De Astis had worked for over 30 years as a textile worker at the Cederna cotton mill before retiring, according to La Stampa.

Dozens of messages of condolence have reportedly been posted in a social media group created by former mill employees.

De Astis had dinner with her sons the night before the incident.

“The only blessing is that we managed to have dinner together the night before,” they told the newspaper.

Her granddaughter said: “She was my second mother, we grew up together. She was a good woman. You can’t die like that.”

The stolen Citroën – which had French number plates – reportedly belonged to a 20-year-old from Strasbourg who was visiting Milan with three friends.

He had parked the car about a mile from the scene and gone to visit the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology with his friends, only to return and find it missing.

He reported it stolen on Sunday evening.

It comes as a popular travel influencer couple who documented their van life adventures online have died in an off-road crash.

Stacey Tourout and Matthew Yeomans reportedly lost control while driving through rough terrain in the mountains near Trout Lake, British Columbia, Canada.

The Canadian couple ran the Toyota World Runners YouTube channel, which had over 200,000 subscribers, and also built a following of 72,000 on Instagram.

News of their deaths was shared by friends and family on social media and confirmed by Kaslo Search and Rescue, who responded to the scene.

July 8 (UPI) — Italian authorities arrested a Chinese national accused by the United States of working at the direction of Beijing to steal COVID-19 vaccine research from U.S. universities, immunologists and virologists during the early days of the pandemic.

Xu Zewei, 33, of China, was arrested Thursday in Malan. The nine-count indictment charging him and his co-conspirator, 44-year-old Chinese national Zhang Yu, was unsealed Tuesday by the Justice Department as it seeks Xu’s extradition. Zhang remains at large.

The arrest and filing of charges are the latest U.S. law enforcement action targeting Chinese nationals accused of working at the behest of Beijing’s foreign intelligence arm, the Ministry of State Security, in recent months.

According to the indictment, Xu and his coconspirators were involved in the China state-sponsored HAFNIUM hacking campaign — also known as Silk Typhoon — that targeted vulnerabilities in the widely used Microsoft Exchange Server program to gain access to victims’ information from February 2020 to June 2021.

Federal prosecutors said they used the vulnerabilities in the Microsoft program to install code known as webshells on their victims’ computers, gaining remote access to the devices.

The victims were not named in the charging document, but are identified as a university located in the Southern District of Texas and a university based in North Carolina involved in “research into COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and testing,” as well as a second university based in the southern district of Texas and a law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, including internationally.

During a press conference Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ganjei for the Southern District of Texas said Xu would be assigned targets from his handlers within the Ministry of State Security’s State Security Bureau with instruction to hack their computers and steal specific information.

Once with access to the requested accounts, he copied gigabits of COVID-19 research that he then transferred to China. Ganjei explained the law firm was targeted for the confidential information it had on its clients, specifically that of U.S. policy makers and government agencies.

“Although the Chinese state-sponsored hackers are, on occasion, indicted by the Department of Justice, it is exceedingly rare — indeed it is virtually unheard of — to actually get your hands on them,” he said.

“Since 2023, the United States has waited quietly and patiently for Xu to make a mistake that would put him within the reach of the American Judicial system. And last week, he did just that, traveling from Shanghai to Milan, Italy.”

Ganjei said Italian authorities took him into custody once his plane touched down.

He further described that alleged crimes as those not specifically targeting computers, but targeting “American scientific innovation” and the “American system of justice.”

“Although, the conduct in this case took place several years ago, we never lost sight of our goal to bring the perpetrators of these cyber intrusions to justice. Now, at least, some of that story can be told,” he said.

A little more than a week earlier, the Justice Department charged two Chinese nationals with spying on the U.S. Navy and its bases as well as assisting Beijing with recruiting others within the U.S. military as potential Ministry of State Security asstes.

Los Angeles lawyer Michael Avenatti was indicted Wednesday on charges of stealing from his former client Stormy Daniels by skimming money from her deal to write a memoir detailing her alleged sexual affair with Donald Trump.

It was the third time in two months that federal prosecutors have charged the celebrity attorney with criminal wrongdoing. Daniels is the sixth Avenatti client whose money he is accused of embezzling.

A federal grand jury in New York accused Avenatti of forging Daniels’ signature on a document instructing her literary agent to wire nearly $300,000 of her money to him.

Avenatti “blatantly lied to and stole from his client to maintain his extravagant lifestyle,” said Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“Far from zealously representing his client, Avenatti, as alleged, instead engaged in outright deception and theft, victimizing rather than advocating for his client,” Berman said.

Avenatti spent roughly half the money on personal expenses, including the lease of a Ferrari, according to prosecutors.

On Twitter, Avenatti denied the charges. “No monies relating to Ms. Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled,” he said.

The indictment charges Avenatti with wire fraud and aggravated identify theft. If convicted on both counts, he faces up to 22 years in prison. Combined with previous criminal charges brought against Avenatti over the last two months, he now faces a maximum penalty of 404 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

Daniels’ new attorney, Clark Brewster of Tulsa, Okla., said he brought the case to the FBI and federal prosecutors earlier this year after she showed him the documentation cited Wednesday in the indictment.

“What I witnessed here was just the most base of criminality,” Brewster said. “It really does take a calculated criminal mind to have done what he did over such a long period of time with such dishonesty — and all the while posing as her champion.”

Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Clark Brewster.

(Brandi Simons / Associated Press)

Under an April 2018 contract that Avenatti helped negotiate with Daniels’ publisher, St. Martin’s Press, and literary agent, Janklow & Nesbit Associates, Daniels was to receive an $800,000 advance in four installments for her memoir, “Full Disclosure.”

The book featured graphic details of her alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe resort. It was published in October.

The publisher sent the first two installments — a total of $425,000 — to Daniels’ agent, which forwarded the money to her after taking a fee, according to the indictment.

But Avenatti embezzled the third and fourth installments, the grand jury alleged. They say he did it by emailing a letter to Janklow & Nesbit on Aug. 1, 2018, instructing the agent to wire the remaining money to a bank account that Avenatti controlled. The letter purported to be from Daniels, with her signature.

But Daniels neither authorized nor signed the “false wire instructions,” the indictment says.

When Avenatti received the two remaining installments, he spent the money on hotels, airline tickets, car services, restaurants, dry cleaning, a $3,900 lease payment on the Ferrari and various business expenses, according to the indictment.

Avenatti repeatedly lied to Daniels to cover up the theft, the grand jury alleged.

“When is the publisher going to cough up my money?” she asked him in December, according to the indictment.

Avenatti did not tell her he’d already received and spent the money, saying instead that he was threatening to sue the publisher for failing to pay her.

“They need to pay you the money as you did your part and then some,” he allegedly told her.

In January, the indictment says, Avenatti told her falsely that St. Martin’s Press was resisting making the payment due to purportedly poor sales.

Avenatti accused of embezzling nearly $2 million that NBA player paid ex-girlfriend »

Daniels made Avenatti famous last year by hiring him to sue President Trump to void a nondisclosure agreement she signed before the 2016 election. In exchange for her silence, the adult-film star was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty last year to a campaign finance felony for orchestrating the deal. Prosecutors say Trump directed Cohen to pay the hush money to Daniels, a stripper who has performed in more than 150 pornographic movies over the last two decades.

When the scandal broke in early 2018, Avenatti fueled the media frenzy in scores of interviews with Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly, George Stephanopoulos and other television news personalities.

Avenatti, who relished bashing Trump on television, explored a run for president, but his career in politics effectively died last fall when Los Angeles police arrested him on suspicion of domestic violence. Prosecutors declined to charge him.

Tensions between Avenatti and Daniels spilled into public view in November.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told the Daily Beast that Avenatti treated her with disrespect, ignored requests for an accounting of her crowdfunding money and, against her wishes, filed a second suit against Trump for defamation. Avenatti denied her allegations.

Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announces Michael Avenatti’s arrest on extortion charges in March.

(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

A federal judge dismissed both of Daniels’ lawsuits against Trump. He ordered Daniels in December to pay Trump $292,000 to cover the president’s legal fees. Two months later, Daniels and Avenatti parted ways for reasons neither disclosed.

“He knew that I was unhappy and looking for new counsel,” Daniels told a crowd at a book promotion event in Washington.

The FBI arrested Avenatti in New York on March 25 after secretly recording what prosecutors allege was an attempt to extort sportswear giant Nike in conversations with the company’s lawyers. He was formally indicted in that case, too, on Wednesday.

Prosecutors say Avenatti threatened to hold a news conference that would take billions of dollars off Nike’s market value unless it paid a client $1.5 million and hired Avenatti and L.A. lawyer Mark Geragos for as much as $25 million to conduct an internal investigation.

Geragos, identified by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator, was not charged with any crimes.

Avenatti’s life of luxury hangs by a thread as IRS comes calling »

Still, the most serious legal threat to Avenatti is in California, where he faces a separate 36-count federal indictment.

In August, he is scheduled to be tried in Santa Ana on charges of embezzling millions of dollars from clients, dodging taxes, defrauding a bank by submitting fake financial papers to get loans and concealing assets from creditors and the federal court that oversaw his law firm’s bankruptcy.

Avenatti denies wrongdoing.

Makeup artist Michelle Phan.

(Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

The clients whose money prosecutors say he stole include Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, a mentally ill paraplegic man on disability, and Michelle Phan, a makeup artist popular on YouTube.

He is also charged with embezzling most of a $2.75-million payment that Miami Heat basketball center Hassan Whiteside intended for an ex-girlfriend, Alexis Gardner, who was an Avenatti client.

Tourists travelling to Belgium are literally picking apart centuries of history in the fairytale-esque city, where authorities have now pleaded with visitors to show some ‘respect’

Most travellers leave a European city break with a fridge magnet or maybe a cute vintage scarf, but it turns out some people are taking much more damaging keepsakes – bits of the actual street.

That’s what’s happening in Bruges, the fairy-tale-like city in Belgium that’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Officials are now begging tourists to stop stealing the city’s historic cobblestones, which date back to the Middle Ages.

Bruges, which attracts over 8 million visitors every year, is best known for its chocolate shops, charming canals, and old-world vibes. But behind the picture-perfect views, locals say the city is literally being picked apart by overbearing tourists who want to take a piece of it home.

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Franky Demon, a city councillor, says Bruges is losing between 50 and 70 cobblestones every month. And while it might seem harmless to lift a loose one from the ground, replacing them costs €200 (£168) per square metre – a price that’s quickly adding up.

“We ask for nothing but respect,” he told The Brussels Times. “Walking in Bruges means treading on centuries of history. Please leave these stones where they belong.”

It’s not just the cost – the theft is damaging some of the city’s most iconic areas, including the Grand Place, Vismarkt, the Gruuthuse Museum and the Lake of Love known as Minnewater – a romantic beauty spot that’s sadly seeing more empty patches than ever.

While heritage plays a huge part in the city’s charm, it’s also a safety issue. With so many of Bruges’ visitors exploring the town on foot, gaps left by missing stones are becoming trip hazards, turning scenic strolls into risky ones.

Over on Reddit, both tourists and locals have been weighing in with suggestions to fix the problem. Some have called for fines and tougher penalties, while others say replicas should be sold in gift shops to stop people from taking the real deal.

CCTV has also been suggested, but for many users, it’s baffling as to why anyone would want to steal a cobblestone in the first place.

One local shared: “I once caught a tourist digging a stone out of the street. I told them horses have been s***ting on it for decades. They didn’t listen and took it anyway.”

The cobble chaos is just one example of overtourism hitting major European destinations. Bruges has already slashed cruise ship arrivals to limit footfall. Meanwhile, Venice has doubled its tourist tax and Palma has capped tour group sizes.

So next time you’re on a city break – settle for the fridge magnet, yeah?

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US federal prosecutors say defendant and co-conspirators got the company to pay for deliveries that never occurred.

A former food delivery driver pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal more than $2.5m from the food delivery service DoorDash.

Sayee Chaitanya Reddy Devagiri pleaded guilty on Tuesday in a federal court in San Jose, California, to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the US Attorney’s Office said.

Devagiri and his co-conspirators would get the company to pay for deliveries that never occurred, federal prosecutors said.

Devagiri, 30, of Newport Beach, California, admitted to working with three others in 2020 and 2021 to defraud the San Francisco-based delivery company, federal prosecutors said. The other three were indicted by a federal grand jury in August.

Prosecutors said Devagiri used customer accounts to place high-value orders and then used an employee’s credentials to gain access to DoorDash software and manually reassign the orders to driver accounts that he and others controlled. He then caused the fraudulent driver accounts to report that the orders had been delivered when they had not and manipulated DoorDash’s computer systems to pay the fraudulent driver accounts for the nonexistent deliveries, officials said.

Devagiri would then use DoorDash software to change the orders from “delivered” status to “in process” status and manually reassign the orders to driver accounts he and others controlled, beginning the process again, prosecutors said.

Devagiri is the third defendant to plead guilty to having a role in this conspiracy. Two co-defendants previously entered pleas to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, authorities said.

Manaswi Mandadapu pleaded guilty this month, and Tyler Thomas Bottenhorn pleaded guilty in November 2023. Bottenhorn was charged separately.

Devagiri faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. He is scheduled to return to court on September 16.