Lithuanian Pleads Guilty To Stealing $100 Million From Google, Facebook (bleepingcomputer.com) 85
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.
"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.
This is a scam that actually works (Score:1)
My uncle owns a business that sells a lot of new exercise/gym equipment usually to new gyms opening up. He's probably the richest one in the family.
But whenever he gets any invoices in the mail or by email or fax, he gets the secretary to pay it, no matter what it is. When I was upgrading his computers for him I started flipping through the invoices he was getting and there was all this weird stuff even some saying it was from an Egyptian embassy and some from Nigeria (not large bills, maybe only $250-$300
Re: This is a scam that actually works (Score:1)
Can you tell your uncle it owes me 300 usd for imaginary coffee he bought in his last dream. Thanks.
Coffee on moon is super expensive. Yeah.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: This is a scam that actually works (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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Nobody cares about Brazil.
Good! (y)
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Stuff like that takes time. Time that could be used drawing up codes of conduct for acceptable pronoun usage.
Also, it's very very boring.
Re: This is a scam that actually works (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
"pleads guilty" (Score:3)
There's nothing like the smell of coerced false confession in the morning!
I get these too! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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 doubl
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Spoken like a true 419 scammer. Victims always deserve it because they're stupid, therefore theft is morally fine.
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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
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As far i know, sending unsolicited bills for unsolicited services to businesses is totally legal, at least in my part of the world.
I hope I don't live in your part of the word.
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As far i know, sending unsolicited bills for unsolicited services to businesses is totally legal, at least in my part of the world.
I hope I don't live in your part of the word.
The Netherlands, EU.
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As far i know, sending unsolicited bills for unsolicited services to businesses is totally legal, at least in my part of the world.
Unsolicited bills for unsolicited services that you actually provide, sure. I'm pretty sure that mailing bills for services you didn't provide constitutes mail fraud.
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I've seen this in Romania as far back as 2001. A legally established company scoured through Yellow Pages and sent thousands and thousands of parcels containing two or three Romanian Flags at inflated prices (say, 25 dollars a piece). Companies which accepted the parcel received an actual product, all legally documented (invoices and everything), albeit highly priced, which is not a crime.
Re:I get these too!/Mail Fraud (Score:2)
I've seen this in Romania as far back as 2001. A legally established company scoured through Yellow Pages and sent thousands... of parcels containing... Romanian Flags at inflated prices
We used to have this problem in the US. The post office issued a decision that any unsolicited good sent through the mail became property of the recipient. This mostly stopped it.
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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.
Holee fuck! Thank you for giving my my new business model!
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Showing that they don't have functional accountants is a public service that should be rewarded and not punished. ... no matter how much sympathy you have for his "business model".
How should an accountant know if a bill is legitimate or not?
That guy is doing fraud
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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.
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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.
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Obviously.
However it does not prevent me sending you a fake bill, that matches your trail.
If my bill comes first, you probably think the real bill is the fake one.
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How should an accountant know if a bill is legitimate or not?
Because there'll be a paper trail (probably in electronic form) linking the invoice to the authorisation and a member of staff that can confirm its legitimacy.
This isn't rocket science, businesses have been doing it for centuries.
No audit trail, no payment.
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That doesn't sound very agile!
Unlimited greediness is your enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unlimited greediness is your enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
With that much money you'd think he could afford a new identity in a country without extradition.
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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 Governmen
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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.
Yup, that's why the US was able to get their hands on Assange so quickly when they wanted him and why Snowden's short-lived flight from the authorities was ill-advised.
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Who needs a new identity? With 100 million in the bank you can just move to any number of nice countries and live awesomely for the rest of your life.
(so long as you manage the money and don't be an idiot).
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What makes you think that money isn't in numbered bank accounts waiting for his release in four years? Can't be tried twice.
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Rimasauskas faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in jail
and the guy seems to be in his 40ies... Tick tock...
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Rimasauskas faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in jail
You understand how sentencing works right? And on top of that, in feds once you do 80% you can parole. So say he gets 10 years, he can be out in 8.
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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 (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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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.
I think knowingly (this is what gets Time Warner off the hook; they claim error, not intentional fraud) sending false bills might be mail fraud. I suspect the wire fraud is for actions relating to accepting the payment -- e.g. setting up accounts in false names, etc.
Product or Target? (Score:1)
He was smart enough not to set up an account in Nigeria. That would have been a giveaway.
Seriously though, Google and Facebook can tell you what you had for breakfast three years ago, on any Wednesday: but they are clueless as to whom they do business with. Probably because it would involve "tracking" their own transactions in the same way...
We aren't just the product, we're the targets.
Inside assistance (Score:2)
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True, but it is difficult to prosecute rich US citizens at home, they can afford defense. Blaming it on some random guy on the other side of the planet, where the government is corrupt enough to send its minions to face "justice" by plea bargain, on the other hand, is a guaranteed success.
How to avoid fraudulent bills (Score:1)
I get this shit too (Score:2)
The government continuously sends me tax assessments for things I don't own, like non existent houses. Yet I have to pay end up in jail. If they can do it, why can't this guy? :p
They'll be getting my bill (Score:1)
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Exactly
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Fraud.
+1 for testacularity (Score:2)
I'm getting a *LOT* of domain renewal notices (Score:2)
I've had a personal domain since back in the days of dialup. It's nice not to have to send out a slew of emails each time I changed ISP.
In the past month, I've gotten a bunch of fake domain renewal notices in my spam folder. Is this a new thing?
wonderful (Score:2)
employees working for those companies probably have to jump through hoops to get their expense reports approved, meanwhile random people just send invoices which get approved and paid without question.