Email scammers managed to take $100 million from two US tech companies

Email scams have been around for years now but over time, scammers have come up with more sophisticated lies, making them much more convincing than the Nigerian Prince emails of old. At this point, some scammers go to great lengths to squeeze cash out of people, which is exactly what happened with Evaldas Rimasauskas and two US-based tech firms recently, with the man getting out with $100 million thanks to a convincing email.

Back between 2013 and 2015, Evaldas Rimasauskas ran a fake company in Latvia using the same name as a computer manufacturer based in Asia. Using this fake company, he contacted two US tech companies, one of which is a ‘multinational social media company'. Both companies involved in this case are choosing to keep their name out of it, presumably to avoid public embarrassment.

 

After making contact with these companies, Rimasauskas used phishing scams in order to get employees with the right access to wire money to his own bank accounts in Latvia and Cyprus. That money was than transferred and spread around various other accounts in an effort to hide the fraud. As Engadget points out, forged documents were then used to ensure the banks saw these transfers as legitimate so they wouldn't reverse the charges or start a fraud investigation.

In total, he was able to use these fake emails to siphon $100 million from the companies involved. However, after a lengthy FBI investigation, he was caught and now faces some serious punishment. If convicted of each of the charges, he could end up in jail for more than 20 years.

KitGuru Says: We don't have access to the emails used in the scam, or know which company this guy was impersonating so it is hard to judge how convincing the scam really was. Either way though, this will end up being a hard lesson for the companies involved. 

 

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