Tech giants duped into sending $100 million to this conman

Phishing scammers largely consider students, small businesses or even professionals unaware of such tactics as their easy targets. However, it is hard to imagine technology-giants like Google or Facebook to face trouble due to this.

A Europe-based conman, Evaldas Rimasauskas was recently arrested on fraud charges for conning employees of Facebook and Google and duping an amount of $100 million each from them. His scheme involved sending emails to employees of the companies and asking them to wire money that they actually owed to an Asian hardware vendor.

It was simple for Rimasaukas to conceal his fraud. He simply forged invoices, contracts and letters allegedly signed by executives of the two companies and managed to carry out his potential scam. According to Fortune, the two tech companies paid out more than $100 million.

“Facebook recovered the bulk of the funds shortly after the incident and has been cooperating with law enforcement in its investigation,” a Facebook spokesperson told MailOnline. Even Google admitted that the company has detected the fraud against their vendor management team and promptly alerted the authorities immediately.

A US extradition request for Rimasauskas is expected by late May, Lithuanian prosecutors told Reuters. The man is charged with wire fraud and money laundering, i.e. prison sentence of 20 years each. Furthermore, he is also slammed with charges of identity theft, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of two years.