A Lithuanian man known as Evaldas Rimasauskas succeeded in bilking two American companies of more than US$100 million by pretending to be a known entity that was doing business with the US firms.
Rimasauskas named in a grand jury indictment filed in the US District Court in the southern district of New York earlier this week. He was arrested last week and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and identity theft.
The indictment said he had been defrauding two US tech companies - all the corporate entities referred to were unnamed - from about 2013 and at least until about October 2015.
He had done so by setting up a company bearing the same name as an Asian firm that was doing business with the two tech firms.
{loadposition sam08}One of these tech companies was dealing in Internet-related services and products, while the second, a multinational corporation, provides online social media and networking services.
Rimasauskas allegedly set up a company in Latvia and opened bank accounts in Latvia and Cyprus.
He then used fraudulent emails to direct the companies that he was seeking to defraud to make payments for services they had received from the Asian company, to his bank accounts.
Rimasauskas used phishing emails to obtain details of officials within the Asian company to make his payment invoices to the two tech companies appear genuine.
He transferred the funds that he received to other accounts in Latvia, Cyprus, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary and Hong Kong. The transfers were made through correspondent banks, including branches in New York.
Rimasauskas is claimed to have created fraudulent invoices which were sent to the banks to alleviate any suspicion they would have over the big amounts that they were being asked to transfer.