Man Defrauds Facebook & Google for $122 Million with Fake Bills

One Lithuanian, Evaldas Rimasauskas, managed to scam not one but two tech giants—Facebook and Google—for more than $122 million together within 2013 and 2015. He submitted fake invoices to these technology companies that actually ended up getting paid since the companies thought the bills were real.

Rimasauskas performed the scam by acting as Quanta Computer, an actual hardware manufacturer based in Taiwan, with whom both Google and Facebook had previous dealings. Using forged invoices, contracts, and emails that appeared to be from executives of these companies, he was able to trick their accountants into wiring money into different bank accounts he controlled, particularly in Latvia and Cyprus​.

This illicit activity went unnoticed until Google detected the anomaly and contacted the authorities. Rimasauskas was arrested in 2017; after extradition to the United States, he was charged with wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. He entered a guilty plea and was sentenced in 2019 to five years in prison, ordered to forfeit $49.7 million, and ordered to pay restitution of nearly $26.5 million​.

The most shocking thing about this scam is that none of the companies had someone look into the legitimacy of the invoices but rather just paid it.