Lithuanian man Evaldas Rimasauskas was sentenced to five years in jail for stealing $120 Million from Google and Facebook employees.

Evaldas Rimasauskas was sentenced to five years of prison for stealing $120 Million from Google and Facebook employees with business email compromise (BEC) attacks carried out between 2013 and 2015.

The Lithuanian citizen Evaldas Rimasauskas (48) was arrested in March 2017 by local authorities. In 2017, the US Law enforcement requested the arrest because the man has stolen by the two IT giants a huge amount of money by posing as large Asia-based hardware vendor Quanta Computer Inc.

Evaldas Rimasauskas is pictured in district court in Vilnius in May 2017 – Source AFP

The indictment explicitly mentioned Facebook and Google. According to the investigators, Rimasauskas created email accounts to trick victims into believing that the emails were sent by employees at the Asian hardware vendor.

He used multiple bank accounts at banks from Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia to receive the fraudulent payments.

The man targeted with spear-phishing emails Google and Facebook employees who “regularly conducted multimillion -dollar transactions with” Quanta representatives. The messages were instructing the employees in delivering large sums of money to Rimasauskas accounts.

He pleaded guilty to wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and three counts of money laundering.

“Evaldas Rimasauskas devised an audacious scheme to fleece U.S. companies out of more than $120m, and then funneled those funds to bank accounts around the globe,” boasted US attorney Geoffrey Berman, prosecutor in the case.

“Rimasauskas carried out his high-tech theft from halfway across the globe, but he got sentenced to prison right here in Manhattan federal court.”

Rimasauskas agreed to forfeit $49,738,559.41 to the United States.

“In addition to the prison term, Judge Daniels ordered RIMASAUSKAS to serve two years of supervised release, to forfeit $49,738,559.41, and to pay restitution in the amount of $26,479,079.24.” reads the press release published by the DoJ.

Pierluigi Paganini