$ 100 Million Fraudster Frauds Google and Facebook, Gets 5 Years in Prison

In the spring of 2017, Evaldas Rimasauskas was arrested in Lithuania, who was accused of deceiving two large technology companies, whose names were not disclosed then, thus assigning more than $ 100 million.

Later it became known that they were talking about giants such as Google and Facebook. Moreover, the fraudulent scheme of Rimasauskas was much more complicated than ordinary phishing and other well-known techniques. Law enforcement authorities explained that the attacker registered a business in his native Lithuania, and his company name, Quanta Computer, was exactly the same as the name of a Taiwanese iron producer. For this company, Rimasauskas also opened accounts with banks in Latvia, Cyprus and other countries of the world.

In the period from 2013 to 2015, Rimasauskas successfully impersonated a representative of Quanta, taking advantage of the fact that his company is called exactly the same. Using mail spoofing, as well as forging accounts, contracts and letters, the attacker managed to deceive employees of Google, Facebook and even representatives of banks, forcing them to make large money transfers to his accounts (supposedly as payment for products and services). After receiving the money, Rimasauskas quickly withdrew funds to other banks in six different countries, including Latvia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary and Hong Kong. These scams are currently referred to as whaling or BEC (Bussiness Email Compromise).

As a result, Rimasauskas fraudulently received $ 23 million from Google and almost $ 100 million from Facebook. Let me remind you that representatives of the affected companies later reported that the funds were soon able to be returned almost in full.

Now the US Department of Justice has reported that Evaldas Rimasauskas was sentenced to five years in prison (although he was threatened with imprisonment for up to 30 years). He also confiscated more than $ 50 million and ordered to pay damages in the amount of another $ 26,479,079. After release, the offender will be required to spend another two years under the close supervision of law enforcement agencies.