A former Tesla employee is under criminal investigation for charging excessive and unnecessary amounts to his company-issued credit card totaling nearly $200,000.
The investigation is being conducted by Detective Michael Kan of the Palo Alto Police Department, who outlined the details of the case in a letter to the City of Anaheim’s building department.
According to the letter, uncovered by Drive Tesla contributor Marco (@MarcoRPTesla), former employee Jorge Rosa was on the Supercharger development team for Southern California, whose primary duties were around the planning, permitting, and development of new Supercharger locations.
The letter goes on to say the employee used his “Tesla-issued credit card for various “goods and services” that Tesla believes to have been either entirely unnecessary, excessive, and/or fictitious.”
As an example, the employee claimed to have paid “extremely large amounts of money” to simply have blueprints printed and attached to a permit application, with Tesla believing that in some instances were not required or even received by the relevant departments.
As part of their investigation, the Palo Alto Police Department was requesting information on a number of records from the building department in relation to a Supercharger station at 8148 East Santa Clara Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim.
In total Tesla believes the employee skimmed nearly $200,000 through various methods.
The letter does not go into detail about how long the former employee engaged in these alleged activities, but Rosa’s LinkedIn profile says he was a “Permitting Specialist” at Tesla from October 2017 until July 2019.
You can read the letter below.
palo alto letter
