Lithuanian Pleads Guilty To Stealing $100 Million From Google, Facebook (bleepingcomputer.com)

schwit1 writes: Evaldas Rimasauskas, a Lithuanian citizen, concocted a brazen scheme that allowed him to bilk Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million. The crime defrauded Google of $23 million and Facebook of $99 million. Rimasauskas committed the crimes between 2013 to 2015, an indictment was issued in 2017, and he was formally indicted Wednesday in New York after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and three counts of money laundering.

"As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. companies out of over $100 million, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe," said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman in a DoJ press release. How did he do it? The indictment reveals that he simply billed the companies for the amounts and they paid the bills. Rimasauskas was able to trick company employees into wiring the money to multiple bank accounts that he controlled and had set up in institutions in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia.

Comments

"pleads guilty"

[astrofurter]

There's nothing like the smell of coerced false confession in the morning!

I get these too!

[resfilter]

It's interesting to see the big guys getting hit with these scams..

In our medium sized single-store retail business, we've seen a huge surge in the last few years in false invoicing from companies we've never dealt with.

For example, you'll get a $424.93 invoice from Artin Technology Consulting Inc. or a $129.00 invoice from Joe's Plumbing, with an address close to where you are, but a head office/billing address out of the country or something. It may even be a real company but with an altered address to send payment to. The services appear to be normal things that you buy. I've often wondered if they dumpster dive to farm data.

We've caught our accountants almost paying the bills due to how similar they look to normal business expenses and overhead for everything from tech services to building maintenance..

They often have purchase order numbers and authorization information from a general manager or something (probably they harvested those from our website's 'contact' section, or simply called in and asked who the general manager is..).

Really all you have to do is keep a proper database of vendors and services, only send payment to addresses on file, and only add a vendor to a database when you're damn sure they're real, and you're good to go.

Weird unknown bill? Screw it, just wait 30 days until any sane company would be hunting you down trying to charge you interest. If it's a scam they probably wont bother you again.

Re:I get these too!

[apoc.famine]

Honestly, I don't think he should be charged at all. If a business is so fucking sloppy that they can't keep track of who they owe what, they don't deserve to be in business. Because that means they're likely defrauding their employees, customers, and other organizations they actually do business with.

Showing that they don't have functional accountants is a public service that should be rewarded and not punished.

Oh....but wait....they have tax attorneys that can make sure that they don't pay taxes. So double fuck them, and let that guy go free. If they spent half as much keeping track of their money as they spend hiding from taxes this wouldn't happen. If this is how they want to allocate resources, I'm very much OK with the result.

Re:I get these too!

[Gavagai80]

Spoken like a true 419 scammer. Victims always deserve it because they're stupid, therefore theft is morally fine.

Re:I get these too!

[xonen]

As far i know, sending unsolicited bills for unsolicited services to businesses is totally legal, at least in my part of the world.

What is illegal is the use of fraudulent addresses, like the address or company name for someone else.

But if i send to a $1000 bill for listing your name in my service which i call an 'online business index', and you choose to pay me, i'm legally all fine. By paying you actually just sealed the contract.

So, it totally depends on what this dude was doing. Surely, i agree it was a scam. But is it legally a scam? Cause a lot of companies get away with such practices and make a good coin already. Morals have very limited legal value.

Re:I get these too!

[jabuzz]

Because a business the size of Google or Facebook has no business not having an ERP. My employer which is much smaller than either of those two but still significantly sized in the scheme of things has one.

No purchase order in the ERP system, no payment of invoice, no if's and no buts and consequently no opportunity for this sort of fraud. Are ERP systems cheap, hell no, but they don't cost anywhere 99 million USD either which is what it cost Facebook for not having one.

Re:I get these too!

[Hognoxious]

How should an accountant know if a bill is legitimate or not?

Ask three questions:

De we know these assholes? - Look for a vendor master.
Did we order this shit? - Look for a purchase order.
Did we get this shit? - Inventory records.

If any of the answers is in the negative, it goes in he big round file.

Unlimited greediness is your enemy

[hcs_$reboot]

The guy could have stopped after a few weeks and enjoy a few millions bucks abroad. No he had to want more and more. Until he's caught.

Re:Unlimited greediness is your enemy

[ArchieBunker]

With that much money you'd think he could afford a new identity in a country without extradition.

Re:Unlimited greediness is your enemy

[Anonymous Coward]

With that much money you'd think he could afford a new identity in a country without extradition.

You don't screw the largest American businesses and get away with it. The United States has ways of making any country you flee to see the wisdom of handing you over. Many Russians and others who thought they were untouchable were arrested and extradited while on holiday in countries they either didn't know or didn't believe would cooperate with American authorities. The United States provides generous foreign aid to just about every country in the world. When the phone rings and it's the American Government on the line, these countries take the call and returning past favors by handing over a foreigner is a very cost effective way for them to demonstrate their gratitude and respect for their American patrons.

Re:Unlimited greediness is your enemy

[Highdude702]

He could have probably gotten $5-10M from each company and have never even been noticed. Greed is what gets people caught. However without greed as a motive he probably would have never done it in the first place. Kind of a chicken and egg problem.

Sending False Bills

[Anonymous Coward]

Is wire fraud? I guess that means they will arrest time warner representitives for sending me false statements. Or are there two sets of laws? One for me and one for big soulless tax evading corporations.

Re: This is a scam that actually works

[alexgieg]

Here in Brazil this is so common that all financial departments of all companies are trained to spot fake billings. Ours always calls our department to check whether a bill that seems related to what we do is legit. And there must be a paper trail showing the goods or services the bill refers to was in fact originally approved by someone with the authority to approve them.

By the way, Brazilian law doesn't consider it a crime to send random bills. Anyone can bill anyone anything as long as they use the proper, standardized, bank-approved method, called "boleto". This makes fake billings even more difficult to distinguish from real ones...

Re: This is a scam that actually works

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds more like your uncle is laundering money that ultimately makes it to his cayman islands account after being routed through these obscure shell companies.