Man tricked Google and Facebook to pay $122m
Last week Lithuanian Evaldas Rimasauskas was convicted of US Wire fraud, aggravating identification robbery, and money laundering charges. He admitted that between 2013 and 2015 he had robbed $ 99 million of Facebook and $ 23 million of Google. Between 2013 and 2015, Rimasauskas tricked employees from Google and Facebook into wired the funds to a Latvian company, which he named Quanta Computer, the Asian hardware provider — claiming that the Silicon Valley companies had owed the seller’s money.
After charging fraud in New York Court last week for fraudulent business email scheme, Evaldas Rimasauskas faces up to 30 years’ imprisonment.
Rimasauskas claimed to be Taiwan’s giant hardware manufacturing company Quanta Computer Inc. and had a company with the same name registered in Latvia.
“What Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today was the creation of a blatant scheme to squeeze US companies from $ 100 million, and then squeeze them into worldwide bank account banks,” said U.S. lawyer Geoffrey S. Berman in a statement.
The scheme has been known as a “business email compromise,” in which smugglers demand money from people working with foreign suppliers after identifying them.
He has agreed to forfeit some 50 million dollars. The rest of the $ 73 m is not clear, but Rimasauskas was a prolific and cash launderer in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Lithuania. It wasn’t clear what happened.
“We found this fraud and alerted authorities quickly,” said Google. “We recovered funds, and we are pleased that this issue has been resolved.”
In the context of his plea agreement “representing the amount of the proceeds traceable in Count One of the indictment that the accused received personally” Rimasauskas agreed to forfeit USD 49,738,559.41 through wire fraud.
Between 2013 and 2015 RIMASAUSKA aimed at the two companies with phishing emails, which looked like a “regular multimillion-dollar transaction” invoice from the leading Asian hardware manufacturer Quanta Computer Inc. Rimasauskas transferred the funds to various bank accounts around the world including Latvia, Cyprus, Hong Kong and a number of other countries soon after the money was wired into his bank accounts.
Furthermore, he forged invoices, contracts, and letters that Facebook and Google staff appeared to have executed and signed to convince banks to transfer large amounts of the funds.
