This Guy Gave Fake Bills Worth 840 Crore To Google & Facebook, And They Just Paid Him The Money

A Lithuanian man has pleaded guilty to swindling Google and Facebook out of a total of $122 million between 2013 and 2015.

He didn't hack their servers, or steal their corporate bank account details. Apparently, he instead just asked them for the money like he was owed it.

nyccriminallawyer.com

Evaldas Rimasauskas hatched a really simple plan. Instead of some long drawn-out Ocean's Eleven montage, he simply sent the companies invoices for items they hadn't ordered. These were accompanied by a bevy of forged paperwork, including contracts and official corporate communications to make it look authentic.

He even registered a fake hardware company called Quanta Computer Inc in Latvia, which shares the name of a real company in Taiwan.

Bewilderingly, both companies paid up.

Apparently, his fake out was so believable that neither company checked to see if his invoices were legitimate. They simply paid Rimasauskas the money, which he them transferred to bank accounts set up in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia.

It was only much later that Google discovered the ruse, which is why Rimasauskas is now facing charges in the US for wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering. He has agreed to forfeit $50 million of what he stole, and could also face up to 30 years imprisonment when he is sentenced on July 29.