Man Stole $122m From Facebook and Google by Sending Fake Bills!

How does it feel to pay a wrong bill? oh very painful, isn’t it? Two big companies paid millions of money to a fraudster who sent to them random fake bills.

Last week, Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania plead guilty to US wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering charges, admitting that he had stolen $99m from Facebook and $23m from Google between 2013 and 2015.

Image result for Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania

Evaldas Rimasauskas of Lithuania

Rimasauskas’s grift was pretty bold. He merely sent Google and Facebook invoices for items they hadn’t purchased and that he hadn’t provided, which the companies paid anyway.

The invoices were accompanied by “forged invoices, contracts, and letters that falsely appeared to have been executed and signed by executives and agents of the Victim Companies, and which bore false corporate stamps embossed with the Victim Companies’ names, to be submitted to banks in support of the large volume of funds that were fraudulently transmitted via wire transfer.” He also spoofed emails that appeared to come from corporate execs.

Image result for Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc,
Quanta company that Rimasauskas Impersonated

Rimasauskas was pretending to be the giant Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc. and had registered a company in Latvia with the same name.

Apparently, no one checked first to see if these corresponded to invoices/POs that had been issued within the companies.

“As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. companies out of $100 million, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe,” said Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman.

“Rimasauskas thought he could hide behind a computer screen halfway across the world while he conducted his fraudulent scheme, but as he has learned, the arms of American justice are long, and he now faces significant time in a U.S. prison.”

“We detected this fraud and promptly alerted the authorities,” said a Google spokesperson, in a statement sent to CNET. “We recouped the funds and we’re pleased this matter is resolved.”

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rimasauskas is scheduled to be sentenced on July 24, 2019.

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