FaceBook, Google Lose $123m to Scammer

The Court of Appeal of Lithuania has decided to extradite to the United States a Lithuanian scam artist identified as Evaldas Rimasauskas, who conned $123 million out of FaceBook and Google by sending fake emails.

“Assumption that the damage was done to the companies registered in the United States became the ground for the extradition of Rimasauskas,” the court said in a press release on Friday.

The decision to extradite the scammer was irrevocable, the court said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York accused Rimasauskas of wire transfer fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering, news agency Elta reported.

It is alleged that Rimasauskas took part in the scam using e-mail correspondence and posed as an Asian computer hardware manufacturer to persuade Google and FaceBook to accept fraudulent invoices and transfer funds to the company established under the same name in Latvia.

The funds were transferred to the latter company’s accounts in banks in Cyprus and Latvia.

The court underlined it has not been assessing the circumstances of the crime and the proof of guilt as it “should trust the information provided by the judicial authority of the country which applied for the extradition.”

Rimasauskas is suspected to have conned 23 million dollars from Google and 100 million dollars from FaceBook.

He was detained in Lithuania on March 16. On April 18, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Lithuania received the U.S. Justice Department’s request to extradite the suspect.

Rimasauskas has denied the charges.

Meanwhile, the attorney of Rimasauskas claimed that the investigation of the suspected crime must take place in Lithuania as the allegedly criminal actions were carried out within the country, local media reported.

Lithuania has a bilateral extradition agreement with the United States and this case “meets all the criteria”, the chairman of the court underlined.