What happened
From roughly 2013 to 2015 Evaldas Rimasauskas registered a Latvian company using the same name as Quanta Computer, a genuine Asian hardware supplier to two large U.S. internet companies, and invoiced them for goods and services the real supplier had delivered. Payments totaling more than $120 million were wired to accounts he controlled in Latvia and Cyprus and then laundered through several countries. He was arrested in Lithuania in March 2017, extradited in August 2017, pleaded guilty in March 2019, and was sentenced on December 19, 2019 to five years in prison.
How the deception worked
The fraud abused the accounts payable relationship between two technology giants and a legitimate Taiwanese hardware manufacturer. Rimasauskas incorporated a shell company bearing the supplier's name in Latvia, opened bank accounts in its name, and sent phishing and invoice emails from addresses designed to look like the supplier's. He supported the requests with forged invoices, contracts and letters carrying counterfeit corporate stamps and executive signatures, which satisfied the victims' vendor verification paperwork. Because the amounts matched real ongoing supplier business, finance staff processed the wires as routine vendor payments, and the funds were quickly moved across Latvian, Cypriot and other accounts.
AI involvement · No AI reported
No AI or synthetic media was reported; the scheme relied on forged paper documents and lookalike corporate identity.
The control that would have caught it· our reading, not a claim from the sources
Bank-detail changes for existing suppliers must be verified by callback to a phone number already on file, and payment files should be reconciled against master vendor records rather than against details supplied in the invoice email.
Sources (6)
- Lithuanian Man Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison For Theft Of Over $120 Million In Fraudulent Business Email Compromise SchemeU.S. Department of Justice, S.D.N.Y.·justice.govOpen ↗
- Ringleader of Business Email Compromise Scheme SentencedFederal Bureau of Investigation·fbi.govOpen ↗
- Lithuanian Man Arrested For Theft Of Over $100 Million In Fraudulent Email Compromise SchemeU.S. Department of Justice·justice.govOpen ↗
- Lithuanian Man Sentenced to Prison Over BEC Scheme Targeting Facebook, GoogleSecurityWeek·securityweek.comOpen ↗
- How this scammer used phishing emails to steal over $100 million from Google and FacebookCNBC·cnbc.comOpen ↗
- Lithuanian scammer gets 5 years for defrauding Google, Facebook of $120 millionCyberScoop·cyberscoop.comOpen ↗
This entry summarises public reporting. It is not a legal finding, and details can change as investigations conclude. Found an error? Send a correction.