A Lithuanian man who duped Google and Facebook into transferring over $100m into accounts he controlled has pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
Evaldas Rimasauskas, 50, sent fraudulent invoices to the California-based tech companies between 2013 and 2015, according to the US Justice Department.
He was involved in running a company that controlled several accounts at banks in Latvia and Cyprus, according to a 2016 indictment filed in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Mr Rimasauskas and his unnamed associates were posing as Quanta Computer, a hardware company based in Taiwan that has done business with Facebook and Google, Reuters reported.
Mr Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to wire fraud in federal court in Manhattan, where Judge George B Daniels set a 24 July sentencing date.
The charge could carry as many as 30 years in prison and a fine of as much as $1m or twice the crime’s proceeds.
The plea deal Mr Rimasauskas reached with prosecutors said he faces almost certain deportation once he finishes his prison time.
In a statement on Wednesday, Geoffrey S Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said: “As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece US companies out of $100m, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe.”
“Rimasauskas thought he could hide behind a computer screen halfway across the world while he conducted his fraudulent scheme, but as he has learned, the arms of American justice are long, and he now faces significant time in a US prison,” Mr Berman added.
Mr Rimasauskas was extradited from Lithuania to the United States in 2017. He has agreed to forfeit around $50m, court documents show.
