Evaldas Rimasauskas, a man from Lithuania, scammed two major US tech companies into wiring over 100 million Dollars to several bank accounts.
According to the reports, the criminal impersonated to be a well-known Asian computer hardware manufacturer by registering his own company with the same name in Latvia, with the same name as a legitimate one in based in Asia.
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For security reasons the names of companies impacted by this scam are kept private however according to the court documents one of the victim companies is being described as “modern Internet-related services and products company” while the other one is a “multinational corporation specializing in online social media and networking services.”
Mr. Evaldas managed to impersonate himself as an employee of the Asian company, and since both companies were their regular customers, they became an easy victim of the scam. As per several media outlets, Mr. Evaldas used phishing emails to collect the details of transactions of both the victim companies. He then used this information to forge letters, invoices, and contracts with the name of the executives making those deals.
Using this masterplan, the criminal managed to fool both the tech giants for over two years, and he managed to get over $100 million wired to his personal accounts in Latvia and Cyprus. He then spread the money to several bank accounts in Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hong Kong and Hungary.
According to the US attorney:
“This case should serve as a wake-up call to all companies – even the most sophisticated – that they too can be victims of phishing attacks by criminals,”
A digital footprint lead the FBI officials to the criminal, and upon investigation, the officials found out that the fraudulent company had a board of directors consisting of just one man: Mr. Evaldas.
The criminal mastermind was arrested by the Lithuanian law and order officials and is now facing the charges of money laundering, aggravated identity theft, and wire fraud. He could be facing 20 years of imprisonment.
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