A 50-year-old from Lithuania pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, in which he scammed tech giants Facebook and Google into paying more than USD 100 million for work that never happened.
Evaldas Rimasauskas and some unnamed conspirators posed as Quanta Computer, a Taiwan-based laptop manufacturer and ran a phishing scam by sending fraudulent emails to agents from Google and Facebook regularly in directing business with Quanta, Cnet reports.
Rimasauskas allegedly asked money for services rendered by the real Quanta Computer be sent to a different bank account in Latvia and Cyprus, all controlled by himself. In all, USD 23 million from Google in 2013 and USD 98 million from Facebook in 2015 were syphoned off.
The prosecutors don’t allege that Rimasauskas was directly responsible for convincing Facebook and Google in sending the money, but believe he created the infrastructure for the money transfer.
He was extradited to the US in August 2017 and now he has pleaded guilty. Rimasauskas is scheduled to be sentenced on July 24, 2019. He could face up to 30 years in prison for the wire fraud.
