Highlights:
- Former Microsoft engineers jailed for 9 year
- The engineers defrauded the company via bitcoins for more than $ 10 million
- He bought a Tesla car and a lakefront home with the money
- The engineer allegedly used a bitcoin mixed to hide taxable income and filed fraudulent tax returns
A former engineer of the world’s leading office solution provider has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for defrauding the firm for over $ 10 million via bitcoin. The engineer allegedly used a bitcoin mixed to hide the taxable income and even filed fraudulent tax returns.
Going by the reports, the engineer used the stolen money to but a $ 1.6 million lakefront home and $ 160,000 Tesla vehicle.
The 26 year old engineer named Volodymyr Kvashuk worked at Microsoft between 2016 and 2018 and allegedly duped the company using their testing program.
The statement by Western District of Washington said, “In February 2020, KVASHUK was convicted by a jury of five counts of wire fraud, six counts of money laundering, two counts of aggravated identity theft, two counts of filing false tax returns, and one count each of mail fraud, access device fraud, and access to a protected computer in furtherance of the fraud.”
At his sentencing hearing, the U.S. District Judge James L. Robart said KVASHUK “didn’t have any respect for the law,”.
The report alleges that the former engineer was part of Microsoft’s online retail sales platform and used that testing access to steal “Currency Stored Value” (CSV) such as digital gift cards.
Using the money that Kvashuk received, he bought a $ 1.6 million lakefront home and a $ 160,000 Tesla vehicle.
The 26 year old not only used his skills to steal digital gift cards, but also tried to safeguard himself and put the blame on his colleagues by using their test email accounts.
The US Attorney Moran said, “Stealing from your employer is bad enough, but stealing and making it appear that your colleagues are to blame widens the damage beyond dollars and cents. This case required sophisticated, technological skills to investigate and prosecute, and I am pleased that our law enforcement partners and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have the skill sets needed to bring such offenders to justice,” commenting on the case.
The former Microsoft employee Kvashuk tried to defend himself when he was convicted by the court by saying that he did not try to defraud the firm but was only working on a specula project which would have benefitted the company.
Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Special Agent in Charge Ryan L. Korner said, “The Volodymyr Kvashuk trial marked a big win for IRS-CI and the federal cybercrimes team. Kvashuk’s criminal acts of stealing from Microsoft, and subsequent filing false tax returns, is the nation’s first Bitcoin case that has a tax component to it. Simply put, today’s sentencing proves you cannot steal money via the Internet and think that Bitcoin is going to hide your criminal behaviors,” about Kvashuk’s arrest. He added, “Our complex team of cybercrimes experts with the assistance of IRS-CI’s Cyber Crimes Unit will hunt you down and hold you accountable for your wrongdoings,”.
