SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A former food delivery driver pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to steal more than $2.5 million from DoorDash by getting the company to pay for deliveries that never occurred, federal prosecutors said.

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

Prosecutors said Devagiri used customer accounts to place high-value orders and then used an employee’s credential 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 be convicted of his role in this conspiracy. Two co-defendants previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, authorities said.

Devagiri faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. He is scheduled to return to court on Sept. 16, 2025.

By DEE-ANN DURBIN

More than 1,000 Starbucks baristas at 75 U.S. stores have gone on strike since Sunday to protest a new company dress code, a union representing the coffee giant’s workers said Wednesday.

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Starbucks put new limits starting Monday on what its baristas can wear under their green aprons. The dress code requires employees at company-operated and licensed stores in the U.S. and Canada to wear a solid black shirt and khaki, black or blue denim bottoms.

Under the previous dress code, baristas could wear a broader range of dark colors and patterned shirts. Starbucks said the new rules would make its green aprons stand out and create a sense of familiarity for customers as it tries to establish a warmer, more welcoming feeling in its stores.

But Starbucks Workers United, the union that represents workers at 570 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned U.S. stores, said the dress code should be subject to collective bargaining.

“Starbucks has lost its way. Instead of listening to baristas who make the Starbucks experience what it is, they are focused on all the wrong things, like implementing a restrictive new dress code,” said Paige Summers, a Starbucks shift supervisor from Hanover, Maryland. “Customers don’t care what color our clothes are when they’re waiting 30 minutes for a latte.”

Summers and others also criticized the company for selling styles of Starbucks-branded clothing that employees no longer are allowed to wear to work on an internal website. Starbucks said it would give two free black T-shirts to each employee when it announced the new dress code.

Starbucks said Wednesday that the strike was having a limited impact on its 10,000 company-operated U.S. stores.

“Thousands of Starbucks partners came to work this week ready to serve their customers and communities,” the company said in a statement. “It would be more productive if the union would put the same effort into coming back to the table to finalize a reasonable contract.”

Starbucks Workers United has been unionizing U.S. stores since 2021. Starbucks and the union have yet to reach a contract agreement, despite agreeing to return to the bargaining table in February 2024.

The union said this week that it filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging Starbucks’ failure to bargain over the new dress code.

Max Martin isn’t a household name – unless you live in a household with a serious pop music aficionado. But the Swedish songwriter and producer has been a dominant force in that field for a few decades now.

In fact, he’s written more No. 1 singles than anyone in music history, save Paul McCartney. Since 1998, Martin has put 27 songs atop the charts, helping create the sound that’s made stars of Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande.

So call it a fun coincidence that Perry was playing Minneapolis’ Target Center on Tuesday night while a musical full of Martin’s songs (including a few made famous by Perry) was setting up shop a few blocks away at the Orpheum Theatre. I can’t speak to Perry’s performance, but I can say this: The North American touring production of “& Juliet” might be the apotheosis of the jukebox musical, the most successful effort yet of that theatrical subgenre, which uses familiar music to tell a fresh story.

While “Mamma Mia” and “Moulin Rouge!” did fine things with the idea, they’re nowhere near as imaginative and inspiring as “& Juliet.” And this touring production is terrific, full of eye-popping full-cast dance numbers rooted in nightclub moves of the ‘90s and ‘00s and featuring some magnificent voices that I daresay eclipse those of these songs’ original purveyors.

And it helps that it’s very funny. David West Read has written a script that’s a kind of meta historical fantasy: We watch as a very 21st-century version of William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, debate the merits of “Romeo and Juliet,” which she regards as dissatisfying because of Juliet’s lack of agency in that quintessential romantic tragedy.

So together they fashion a sequel that unfolds before our eyes and ears, each writer upping the other with new scenarios and characters, including Hathaway inserting herself into the story as a friend of Juliet. And Martin’s songs (mostly) fit the action well, from the playwriting pair arguing over the show’s direction with the help of the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” to Rachel Simone Webb’s Juliet making an affecting ballad of Spears’ “Baby One More Time” to a showstopping take on Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” directed at a recently revived Romeo.

The driving force at the center of almost all the show’s best numbers is Webb’s voice, which is a marvelous instrument for this music, equally capable of delivering touching tenderness or a velvety wail of triumphant transcendence. But Teal Wicks’ Anne is the quirky catalyst for this offbeat tale – spiriting Juliet and friends away to Paris to be tossed into the middle of a romantic triangle or two – and Wicks makes her magnetic in a lovably dorky kind of way.

She’s a strong singer, as are Kathryn Allison as Juliet’s nurse and guardian, Angelique, and Nick Drake as May, our heroine’s nonbinary sidekick and possible romantic rival.

Director Luke Sheppard and choreographer Jennifer Weber have inspired the cast to embrace the material with energy and enthusiasm, and the vision is complemented splendidly by Soutra Gilmour’s versatile set design, Paloma Young’s costumes, and the animations and projections of Andrzej Goulding.

They help make “& Juliet” a supremely well-executed bit of frothy fun that also holds some inspiring messages about empowerment and finding your own path.

‘& Juliet’

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave., Mpls.

Tickets: $337-$53, available at hennepinarts.org

Capsule: Contemporary pop meets the Elizabethan era to fun and funny effect.

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By BRUCE SHIPKOWSKI

Some 350,000 commuters who work in New Jersey and New York City could soon be scrambling for other ways to reach their destinations if New Jersey Transit engineers walk off the job early Friday.

NJ Transit — the nation’s third largest transit system — operates buses and rail in the state, providing nearly 1 million weekday trips, including into New York City. A walkout would halt all NJ Transit commuter trains, which provide heavily used public transit routes between New York City’s Penn Station on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other as well as the Newark airport, which has grappled with unrelated delays of its own recently.

Wages and working conditions have been the main sticking points of the negotiations between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. The union claims its members earn an average salary of $113,000 a year and says an agreement could be reached if agency CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average yearly salary of $170,000.

NJ Transit leadership, though, disputes the union’s data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000.

“I cannot keep giving money left and right to solve a problem,” Kolluri recently said. “It all comes down to, who is going to pay for this? Money does not grow on trees.”

Tom Haas, the union’s general chairman, has said NJ Transit has adopted a “take it or leave it” approach to salaries during the negotiations.

“We have sought nothing more than equal pay for equal work, only to be continuously rebuffed by New Jersey Transit,” Haas said during a news conference Friday. ”New Jersey Transit engineers want to keep the trains moving, but the simple fact is that trains do not run without engineers.”

If the walkout does happen, it would be the state’s first transit strike in more than 40 years.

Strike contingency plans

If the engineers do walk off the job, the agency plans to increase bus service, saying it would add “very limited” capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and will contract with private carriers to operate bus service from key regional park-and-ride locations during weekday peak periods.

However, the agency notes that the buses would not be able to handle close to the same number of passengers — only about 20% of current rail customers — so it is has urged people who can work from home to do so if there is a strike.

The potential strike is already causing some disruptions. On Monday, NJ Transit said it will not operate train or bus service to MetLife Stadium for Shakira concerts scheduled for Thursday and Friday, and said it’s not clear yet if it will be providing service for Beyonce fans planning to attend her shows scheduled at MetLife from May 22 to 29.

Commuter options if there is a strike

If a walkout does occur, NJ Transit has said the chartered buses will run from four satellite lots across the state to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan or to PATH train stations in north Jersey, starting Monday. The PATH system is operated by a subsidiary of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and its services would not be affected by the potential strike.

As many as 1,000 passengers are on a full train each day, and roughly 70,000 commuters take the trains each day. NJ Transit says each chartered bus could carry only about 100 passengers, and no buses would run on the first day of a potential strike.

Officials expect some train customers will switch to existing NJ Transit bus routes or use the chartered carriers. Others may choose to drive into New York City, where they would have to pay congestion pricing fees.

Negotiations ongoing

The potential walkout comes a month after union members overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management. Both sides had earlier said the tentative agreement included a “reasonable wage increase” for union members as well as the resolution of a long-standing grievance.

Kolluri has said the offer would have raised the average annual pay of full-time engineers to $172,000 from $135,000, but union leaders say those figures were inflated.

Since that proposal was rejected, the two sides have traded jabs over the labor dispute, which goes back to 2019, when the engineers’ contract expired. Union leaders say train engineers have gone without a raise over the past five years and are just seeking pay parity with engineers who work for other rail agencies.

The parties met Monday with a federal mediation board in Washington to discuss the dispute, but both sides and the board have declined to comment on whether any progress was made or if more talks have been scheduled.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, says all options are on the table if a strike occurs, including declaring a state of emergency. The governor, though, remains optimistic an agreement can be reached.