Man Scams Facebook & Google Out of $122M 😱 -

Sometimes the most shocking scams are the simplest ones. That’s exactly what happened when Evaldas Rimasauskas, a man from Lithuania, stole $122 million from two of the world’s biggest tech companies Facebook and Google using nothing more than fake emails and forged documents.

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💻 The Bold Plan

Between 2013 and 2015, Rimasauskas impersonated Quanta Computer Inc., a real hardware supplier that both companies had worked with before. He created a lookalike company in Latvia and began sending phony invoices to Facebook and Google.

Amazingly, the companies didn’t question the invoices and wired the money $99 million from Facebook and $23 million from Google to bank accounts in Latvia and Cyprus controlled by Rimasauskas.

📄 Fake Documents and Forged Signatures

To pull this off, he used forged contracts, fake corporate stamps, and even letters with the forged signatures of company executives to make the scam look legitimate.

The companies assumed the payments were for actual services but they never verified the requests. As IGN pointed out, the most shocking part is that no one double-checked before sending the millions.

⚖️ Arrest, Trial, and Sentence

In 2017, Rimasauskas was caught by Lithuanian authorities and extradited to New York. In 2019, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to 60 months (5 years) in prison.

Judge George Daniels also ordered:

Two years of supervised release
$49.7 million in forfeitures
$26.5 million in reimbursement

🛡️ A Wake-Up Call for Tech Giants

“This case should serve as a wake-up call,” said acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim. “Even the most sophisticated companies can fall victim to phishing attacks.”

Thanks to quick cooperation between the FBI, Facebook, Google, and their banks, much of the money was recovered but the incident remains one of the biggest examples of corporate carelessness.