Facebook and Google duped millions of dollars

In March, it was reported that a Lithuanian man had been charged over an
email phishing attack against “two US-based internet companies” that
were not named at the time.

They had allegedly been tricked into wiring more than $100m to the alleged scammer’s bank accounts.

On 27 April, Fortune reported that the two victims were Facebook and Google.

The man accused of being behind the scam, Evaldas Rimasauskas, 48,
allegedly posed as an Asia-based manufacturer and deceived the companies
from at least 2013 until 2015.

“Fraudulent phishing emails were sent to employees and agents of the
victim companies, which regularly conducted multimillion-dollar
transactions with [the Asian] company,” the US Department of Justice
(DOJ) said in March.

These emails purported to be from employees of the Asia-based firm, the
DOJ alleged, and were sent from email accounts designed to look like
they had come from the company, but in fact had not.

The DOJ also accused Mr Rimasauskas of forging invoices, contracts and
letters “that falsely appeared to have been executed and signed by
executives and agents of the victim companies”.

“We detected this fraud against our vendor management team and promptly
alerted the authorities,” a spokeswoman for Google said in a statement.

“We recouped the funds and we’re pleased this matter is resolved.” 

However, the firm did not reveal how much money it had transferred and
recouped. Nor did Facebook, but a spokeswoman said: “Facebook recovered
the bulk of the funds shortly after the incident and has been
cooperating with law enforcement in its investigation.”