Man Who Failed to Scam 100 Million USD to Google and Facebook Could Be Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison

A man of Lithuanian nationality and his badociates have found a way to steal millions of dollars from Facebook and Google by e-mail, but the US authorities are now seeking to sentence him to 30 years in prison.

Evalimas Rimasauskas, 50, orchestrated a fraudulent system to deceive the technology giants, headquartered in California. The man would have developed a plan to send bills to both companies, which was apparently good enough for the two to end up 100 million USD.

According to an indictment filed at the US District Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the Rimasauskas organization was controlling several bank accounts in Latvia and Cyprus. However, to fool Google and Facebook, he and his badociates introduced themselves as representatives of Quanta Computer, A hardware company based in Taiwan that has established commercial relations with both companies.

The judicial authorities explained that the Lithuanian and his badociates, who until now have not been identified, claimed to be representatives of the Taiwanese company between October 2013 and the same month of 2015, thus creating a false society bearing a similar name. The hustlers badured the computer giants that their business owed money to Quanta.

Once the amount was deposited, it was quickly transferred to different bank accounts in Lithuania, Cyprus, Slovakia, Hungary, Hong Kong and some United States. To justify these transfers, contracts and forged documents were signed and presented to the banks.

Evaldas Rimasauskas was extradited from Lithuania to the United States in 2017. After pleading guilty last week, the authorities scheduled his sentence on July 24; could face 30 years in prison.

Originally, Rimasauskas was charged with five counts of identity theft and money laundering. But after pleading guilty, four charges were dropped, according to the victim's defense attorney, Paul D. Petrus Jr.

Facebook issued a statement Sunday to explain that had recovered most of the stolen funds and that he always cooperated with the police in his investigation.

For its part, Google said it quickly detected fraud and immediately called the authorities. "We recover the funds and we are happy that this case has been solved"

According to the FBI, crimes involving cheating large corporations have become more and more common and have generated billions of dollars in losses.