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Lithuanian Man Pleads Guilty to Scamming Facebook and Google Out of $100 Million

The man posed as an Asian hardware vendor to claim the tech giants owed money, federal prosecutors say.

A Lithuanian man pleaded guilty on Wednesday to helping orchestrate a scheme to defraud Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million, federal prosecutors announced. Evaldas Rimasauskas, 50, entered his plea to one count of wire fraud before U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan. U.S. prosecutors say Rimasauskas and unnamed co-conspirators posed as an Asian hardware vendor and claimed Google and Facebook owed the vendor money. The scheme defrauded Google out of $23 million and Facebook out of $99 million, according to court documents. Prosecutors said Rimasauskas contributed to the scheme by setting up a fake company and a bank account in Latvia. He faces up to 30 years in prison at his sentencing, which is currently scheduled for July 24.

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