Ex-Microsoft dev used test account to swipe $10m in tech giant's own store credits, live life of luxury, Feds allege A former Microsoft software engineer was arrested on Tuesday and charged with mail fraud for allegedly attempting to steal $10m in digital currency from his former employer, US prosecutors said today. Volodymyr Kvashuk, 25, a citizen of Ukraine residing in Renton, Washington, initially worked for Microsoft as a contractor and …
Repayment of the proceeds from all ill gotten gains, and any fines are paid after. Even if you for instance bought $1 million worth of stock that went up to $2 million you have to give up the full $2 million. So goodbye Tesla, goodbye house, and goodbye all bitcoin he may have whether they've gone up or down in value since he bought them.
There was a fraudster in NZ who defrauded the government (~20 identites used for benefits) of several million over a couple of decades.
He'd invested the money in various things, many of which had produced very high returns. Apple stock etc.
His brief argued that he should only have to pay back the stolen amount plus interest, plus the fines.
Can't recall what the judge ordered, but he did suggest that the government super fund consider hiring the guy as an investment advisor.
Oh indeed, if his OPSEC was good his Bitcoins will be fine. However, he won't be when it comes to sentencing because if he fails, upon conviction, to cooperate fully with restitution the judge will throw the sentencing book at him. He will get max, and it will be many a long year before he gets any opportunity to continue to spend his ill-gotten gains.
Any judgements against him for remaining amounts will remain in force, so he can't simply wait until he gets out of jail and then spend the bitcoin. If he starts 'living above his means' he'll be noticed, and back in front of a judge pretty quickly. It is no different than if he'd buried $1 million in cash in some secret place, and bought himself a new car shortly after getting out of prison.
But your post is further proof that bitcoin is basically only useful for crime.
"That's the maximum federal fine unless you defrauded the government then there's a different set of fine levied. He will be sued by Microsoft in a civil trial for much greater restitution."
And don't forget the IRS will be knocking on his door for tax evasion, in addition for penalties/fees for not declaring his illegal income. Yes, he is in quite a pickle.
Good luck to him. Rather like a bent Mob accountant succumbing to overwhelming temptation, his sins are venial.
Not to mention, stealing virtual items of imaginary value, the 'owners' can put their own valuation on such an item --- just like those Asian nuts who trade in virtual game items like swords. You take my imaginary sword and I can claim a loss of £10 or £100,000.
You can buy stuff from their store that you can also buy from a physical shop, so it's pretty easy to put a 1:1 valuation on that. eg if you can buy a copy of Halo for M$20 and the RRP in other stores is $20.
Of course, he probably had to forfeit a big chunk of that value when he laundered it.
Wow, so it's still happening... It's not enough to work at MS and ge all the perks PLUS a six figure salary... When I was there in the 2000s, one of the admins on a team I was on stole millions in Server and SQL... It was a real common thing.. A friend gt busted after removing all the "good" HW from his lab machine and replacing it with his own "not-so-good" HW...
Even worse. he was only there a week or so and they caught him redhanded stealing a POWER STRIP...
It's true that most crims are idiots, because they can't get a gainful income any other way.
Yep, in his shoes, I would have bought the house or some other asset that can be readily converted to cash, flipped it quicky (assuming a profit), and then calmly resigned and departed back to Ukraine with my ill-gotten gains.
He got caught because of "service provider records that point to Kvashuk", and because he used a device with a "specific device identifier"? Seriously? What a plonker.
And Microsoft pays $116,000 (£93K) for a testing job? WTF? You'd think they could produce some useful software for that sort of money.
And I'm not quite sure what the problem is with having assets of $1.76M on a salary of $116K. That's a multiplier of 15, which doesn't sound like it's completely out of the question. Unless you're a banker, of course, in which case it's way too low.
Not out of the question if he'd been working there for most of his life maybe, but since he's only 25 and worked for Microsoft for 2 years, I'm fairly sure that's what flagged him as the culprit.
It's like the third Superman movie where Richard Pryor's character steals all the fractional transactions and adds them to his own salary. Then turns up to work the next day in a brand new Ferrari.
Microsoft disabled the purchasing of physical goods but allowed unlimited digital purchases ... including digital cash? Damn. This guy got greedy/stupid, but I bet there's a few worried devs at Microsoft right now that spotted this problem and chose to exploit it a little rather than report it.
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