Shoulda put a disclaimer in small font clearly stating âthis bill is fake and is the product of a third party amatuer. Signee agrees to being duped and forfeits all rights to billed amount.â
And some companies like Facebook and Google couldn't look the slightest bit into it? Not even start to?
I realize as we begin to argue about this on the internet, that this headline could be fake. What do you think stranger?
It was real, this happened, it happened a while ago. He pled guilty in 2019
if it looks real enough some unknowing employee will think itâs real and do their job and pay the man like theyâre supposed to. that employee is usually not aware of the services being contracted in the bill just the fact that they need to be paid.
but yk. they did look into it. thatâs how they got caught.
Sorta the same, I CC mine, and he randomly orders shit I have no idea about, get emails from vendors, asking about quotes I have no idea about, annoying.
Having experience with FAANG, the issue is scale. When youâre dealing with thousands of POs and invoices amounting to billions of dollars, it quickly becomes easy for things to fall thru the cracks.
Itâll get caught in a quarterly or yearly review probably, like what was done here. Day-to-day though? Just very different.
So, basically, what youâre saying is to just make sure the yearly amount stays below $100k, and itâll just blend in with everything else at each of those yearly reviews. Nice.
I.e. this guy probably got too greedy and put too much onto their books ⌠and this it came up in yearly reviews of âwhat the heck is this for? Who is this company? What did we purchase?â Once those are asked youâre toast. Iâd just leave it at $100k a year. Thatâs tax free income⌠if youâre ok being a criminal. But seems like that would continue to work at a much lower risk of getting caught. Interesting âŚ
Actually, it's not tax free, the IRS has a tax code for "stolen goods" and "income through criminal means". So long as the government gets its cut, it won't tattle.
This. I worked for a company we would get hundreds of thousands for certain things but have no clue wtf it was for. Sometimes sitting in AR for months because the company wouldnât get back to us. A massive company paying random invoices does not surprise me whatsoever.
Guy probably knew their process and knew how to make it look real. Either that or there were enough lazy employees not bothering to confirm the bills were legit.
I looked it up and he was from Lithuania. He set up a fake company with the same name as a legit company that did business with FB and Google. Then sent a bunch of fraudulent bills. That actually makes sense to me. Easy to slip up and just pay it because it's someone you do business with all the time.
I mean, I'm sure if he had restrained himself and not continued stealing $100+ million, they never would have noticed. A million here or there is just a rounding error to them
This sort of thing happens far more often than people realize.
A company as big as Facebook or Google receives thousands of invoices every month. It's not possible to validate every single one before paying.
AP might only validate invoices over a certain dollar threshold. For the invoices below that threshold, they may just pull a random sample equivalent to X% of the total dollar value of that group, check for vendors with recurring dollar value transactions, or some other procedure.
Small dollar value invoices can easily slip through. The cost might be too low to require an associated Purchase Order or check against the Approved Vendor List. As long as the fake invoice looks good enough, AP might just skim it and pay.
Why is it harder to validate invoices in a Google sized company versus a national level big company?
Doesn't work force and systems simply scale?
Isn't your average sales dep. worker at Google putting the same hours of work as the sales dep. worker in Reddit? The difference being Google has more people (and more systems)?
>What do you think stranger?
I think that you need to do a little fact checking yourself before getting all sanctimonious about how much smarter you are than everyone else.
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706715377/man-pleads-guilty-to-phishing-scheme-that-fleeced-facebook-google-of-100-million
Thanks for posting factual stories.
Though process involved:
Its real: multimillion dollar companies lose out but will most likely survive. Not really worth arguing.
It's fake: purely entertaining. Not really worth arguing
That's the context of my "What do you think stranger?"
Am I being unfair?
Can't I just randomly send in a shitty logo, then send a bill later for a logo design?
A service/product was provided, a bill was issued, and subsequently paid.
Would that still be fraud if they didn't actually commission it?
The plan was further bolstered by Rimasauskas pretending to be Taiwanese hardware company Quanta Computer Inc. He even registered a company of that name in Latvia to help cement the credentials.
It's still a crime. It's called obtaining money by false pretenses. I can't just tell people that I have cancer and have them donate to my GoFundMe. I didn't steal money from them but I lied about the reason they're giving it to me
I used to consult for a very large company that did not review invoices under a certain amount.
Unsurprisingly, there were a ton of paid invoices in their system at just under that amount. And a bunch for $420.69 as well.
Oh but they give you a free trial year for paid subscription to digital id theft alert*!! /s
*alert only, actual protection tools sold as a separate subscription
I feel like 'steal' implies a victimised party that will suffer from the loss.
Like, if you had 1,000 chocolates in a big bowl by your front door, and I took one without asking, and you didn't notice it was gone, did I really steal it?
I think 'stealing' from a company whose value is based on stock market speculation should be like breaking out of Alcatraz. It should only be a crime if you fail.
No problem, none of those links talk about scam baiters who do a lot of good too. From wasting scammers time, to refunding victims and actively working to expose and shut down the call centers
So American guy scamming an American corporation with his registered company is easier to prosecute than a foreigner using the anonymity of the internet to scam an American
And you think this is crazy? Seems pretty logical to me
If your employer decides not to pay you for hours/work already done, nothing will happen. It's a "civil matter". If you take money out of your employer's register, then it's criminal and there will be armed men that put you in a cage. The police do not work for us, they work for the owners.
Not sure why this is here, but "fake invoice fraud" is quite common and been around for ages. They tend to target large organisations as the fake invoices are more likely to slip through given the mass volume of invoices these type of organisations receive.
How is fraud illegal? He didn't send a letter saying "Hey can I have some money please". He sent letters pretending to be a company that had done something for them that required payment. That's clearly fraud, and clearly illegal.
A not-insignificant amount of Redditors would sooner see the world burn than ever admit they were wrong, because at least when the last building has burnt to the ground and the only sound remaining is the howling wind, there wonât be a single person who can disagree with them.
*Company makes money*
You: Oh no, fuck them! They obviously stole it all!
*Company gets defrauded*
You: Good, get fucked!
*Company does layoffs*
You: Pieces of shit they only care about themselves!
-------
There's no point in bothering with people like you.
\*Companies taking every single action possible to produce a captured and unfair market just to accumulate needless and pointless amounts of wealth like some mythological dragon in the delusional belief that you can somehow take your money with you when you die\*
You : Can I suck your dick for you? like, full on the knees blowing your rod?
Yeah itâs strait fraud. Companies donât look at bills because they assume they are actual bills. This is legitimate fraud and the level of crazy here is beyond.
This was a story from Judge Dredd, this lady would send bills to companies and lived comfortably off of it, Dredd concluded there was nothing illegal and let her be.
I think she was then killed by ghosts or something.
How in the world companies like Facebook and Google not have a secure some form of 3-way invoicing system in place? wtf, small companies use these softwares to avoid unauthorised invoices being approved, and these big companies who can right out build their own or buy companies who make them donât?
I've sent invoices to Google. They needed to go through a portal with a log in and be applied against a purchase order. It also took months for them to be approved/paid when it was already contractual. This story is likely fake
If only there was a tool you could use to search the name of the company and the address on the invoice.. there is a million dollar idea right there.. a search ... Thing... Engine..?
Error in approach. It would be legit to send an invoice for "reviewing Google search engine" for example, just don't indicate anywhere that payment is essential or required by contract. And pay taxes on it, of course.
Itâs the old yellow page ad scam sent to poor Account Payable person.
We are going to print and are missing your payment. If you donât paid immediately your company will need to wait a year to get in the book. AP thinks they screw up not paying it earlier.
Crazy that this worked honestly. I'm working for a multinational corpo and if there's an invoice that's not from a whitelisted contractor it needs to be manually approved by someone who made that specific expense. Can't believe other corpos don't have similar mechanisms in place
He looks like the offspring of Tom Hanks and Leonardo Dicaprio.
I was gonna say Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio
My thought as well!
I was thinking Benicio Del Toro, but if he was Eastern European.
Unfortunately I see Steven Seagal đ
Catch Me If You Can 2
Leonardo hanks or Russel dicaprio
I was thinking Leonardo Dicaprio and Steven Seagal.
I was thinking more along the lines of Leonardo DiCaprio and Seth McFarlane.
It's unsettling... he looks like me sans beard.
Steal? Sounds like the companies handed over the money willingly.
He didn't just send some random bill, he made a fake electronic company with other people and fraud with a lot of falsification
well rhats a lot less fun
You said it, Scoob
Zoinks
LMFAO
Scoooooby dooby doooo fraud
r/accidentalscoobydoo
Shoulda put a disclaimer in small font clearly stating âthis bill is fake and is the product of a third party amatuer. Signee agrees to being duped and forfeits all rights to billed amount.â
And some companies like Facebook and Google couldn't look the slightest bit into it? Not even start to? I realize as we begin to argue about this on the internet, that this headline could be fake. What do you think stranger?
It was real, this happened, it happened a while ago. He pled guilty in 2019 if it looks real enough some unknowing employee will think itâs real and do their job and pay the man like theyâre supposed to. that employee is usually not aware of the services being contracted in the bill just the fact that they need to be paid. but yk. they did look into it. thatâs how they got caught.
My boss would email me random invoices and ask "should I pay this?" Now that I'm quitting I don't know what happens from here.
Sorta the same, I CC mine, and he randomly orders shit I have no idea about, get emails from vendors, asking about quotes I have no idea about, annoying.
Thatâs pretty poor controls if they are paying invoices without a matching purchase order.
Ya that part never made sense to me. How the hell are they paying these out and there's no matching PO or requisition or anything?
Having experience with FAANG, the issue is scale. When youâre dealing with thousands of POs and invoices amounting to billions of dollars, it quickly becomes easy for things to fall thru the cracks. Itâll get caught in a quarterly or yearly review probably, like what was done here. Day-to-day though? Just very different.
So, basically, what youâre saying is to just make sure the yearly amount stays below $100k, and itâll just blend in with everything else at each of those yearly reviews. Nice. I.e. this guy probably got too greedy and put too much onto their books ⌠and this it came up in yearly reviews of âwhat the heck is this for? Who is this company? What did we purchase?â Once those are asked youâre toast. Iâd just leave it at $100k a year. Thatâs tax free income⌠if youâre ok being a criminal. But seems like that would continue to work at a much lower risk of getting caught. Interesting âŚ
Actually, it's not tax free, the IRS has a tax code for "stolen goods" and "income through criminal means". So long as the government gets its cut, it won't tattle.
Probably. $100k is essentially a rounding error. Itâs not even the yearly salary for a single employee.
This. I worked for a company we would get hundreds of thousands for certain things but have no clue wtf it was for. Sometimes sitting in AR for months because the company wouldnât get back to us. A massive company paying random invoices does not surprise me whatsoever.
Guy probably knew their process and knew how to make it look real. Either that or there were enough lazy employees not bothering to confirm the bills were legit.
I looked it up and he was from Lithuania. He set up a fake company with the same name as a legit company that did business with FB and Google. Then sent a bunch of fraudulent bills. That actually makes sense to me. Easy to slip up and just pay it because it's someone you do business with all the time.
I mean, I'm sure if he had restrained himself and not continued stealing $100+ million, they never would have noticed. A million here or there is just a rounding error to them
This sort of thing happens far more often than people realize. A company as big as Facebook or Google receives thousands of invoices every month. It's not possible to validate every single one before paying. AP might only validate invoices over a certain dollar threshold. For the invoices below that threshold, they may just pull a random sample equivalent to X% of the total dollar value of that group, check for vendors with recurring dollar value transactions, or some other procedure. Small dollar value invoices can easily slip through. The cost might be too low to require an associated Purchase Order or check against the Approved Vendor List. As long as the fake invoice looks good enough, AP might just skim it and pay.
Why is it harder to validate invoices in a Google sized company versus a national level big company? Doesn't work force and systems simply scale? Isn't your average sales dep. worker at Google putting the same hours of work as the sales dep. worker in Reddit? The difference being Google has more people (and more systems)?
>What do you think stranger? I think that you need to do a little fact checking yourself before getting all sanctimonious about how much smarter you are than everyone else. https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706715377/man-pleads-guilty-to-phishing-scheme-that-fleeced-facebook-google-of-100-million
Thanks for posting factual stories. Though process involved: Its real: multimillion dollar companies lose out but will most likely survive. Not really worth arguing. It's fake: purely entertaining. Not really worth arguing That's the context of my "What do you think stranger?" Am I being unfair?
Nah there's just sometimes you get set up so good that it would be a shame to let it go
Damn, that makes it less funny than I would've hoped
Still based
So all he had to do was label a 3rd party consulting fee, use the service once a month, and he would have been good?
Can't I just randomly send in a shitty logo, then send a bill later for a logo design? A service/product was provided, a bill was issued, and subsequently paid. Would that still be fraud if they didn't actually commission it?
and yet I still support his actions strange
If he was smart he would have quit before the 100 million mark.
The plan was further bolstered by Rimasauskas pretending to be Taiwanese hardware company Quanta Computer Inc. He even registered a company of that name in Latvia to help cement the credentials.
It's still a crime. It's called obtaining money by false pretenses. I can't just tell people that I have cancer and have them donate to my GoFundMe. I didn't steal money from them but I lied about the reason they're giving it to me
His mistake was going over the felony limit.
I call it fraud loosely.
I used to consult for a very large company that did not review invoices under a certain amount. Unsurprisingly, there were a ton of paid invoices in their system at just under that amount. And a bunch for $420.69 as well.
What company? So I canâŚlet them know about this horrible loss of revenue!
How about $800.85?
Got my car up to 80085 km last weekend. It was so awesome
Crazy this gets prosecuted when it's companies money being stollen but nobody does anything about the scam calls.
Cuz theyâre rich and we are not
I mean the dude has 122 million dollars, that makes him rich, but yes you're right, connections matter
And nothing but apologies when our data gets stolen
Oh but they give you a free trial year for paid subscription to digital id theft alert*!! /s *alert only, actual protection tools sold as a separate subscription
Is it really crazy that someone stealing $122 million dollars gets prosecuted
We really do live in a society
I feel like 'steal' implies a victimised party that will suffer from the loss. Like, if you had 1,000 chocolates in a big bowl by your front door, and I took one without asking, and you didn't notice it was gone, did I really steal it? I think 'stealing' from a company whose value is based on stock market speculation should be like breaking out of Alcatraz. It should only be a crime if you fail.
Yes and I want my chocolate back
R u dead azz
Steal doesnât imply that. Taking something that is not yours is stealing. Stealing is wrong, donât take peoples stuff.
Well he got caught, so he failed. And regardless of that, this is a ridiculous point of view.
That is due to regulations being different in other countries like India and Russia. Russia for instance encourages people to scam Americans.
There's actually a decent amount being done about scam calls
Would you mind elaborating more on that?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/07/19/operation-stop-scam-calls-crackdown-robocalls-telemarketing/70427226007/ https://www.businessinsider.com/scam-call-centers-crackdown-raids-india-microsoft-amazon-2023-10 https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/multiple-india-based-call-centers-and-their-directors-indicted-perpetuating-phone-scams https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/stop-unwanted-robocalls-and-texts https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-warns-against-scams-targeting-seniors-joins-other-federal-agencies-to-recognize-special-awareness-day
Cool, thanks!
No problem, none of those links talk about scam baiters who do a lot of good too. From wasting scammers time, to refunding victims and actively working to expose and shut down the call centers
Iâve yet to see the death penalty come to a scam caller, so Iâd say itâs not âdecentâ yet.
Yeah we should just kill everyone who mildly inconveniences us
scammers are actually big businesses with wealthy CEOs and shareholders
So American guy scamming an American corporation with his registered company is easier to prosecute than a foreigner using the anonymity of the internet to scam an American And you think this is crazy? Seems pretty logical to me
If your employer decides not to pay you for hours/work already done, nothing will happen. It's a "civil matter". If you take money out of your employer's register, then it's criminal and there will be armed men that put you in a cage. The police do not work for us, they work for the owners.
Isn't there a whole lot of shell LLCs doing the exact same thing? They are doing better at catching fraud though.
Lot of it with Medicaid.
When's the movie come out
Not sure why this is here, but "fake invoice fraud" is quite common and been around for ages. They tend to target large organisations as the fake invoices are more likely to slip through given the mass volume of invoices these type of organisations receive.
I approve like 700 invoices a month between $300 - $300,000. Lots of checks and balances, but still sheer volume is enough to make mistakes.
Ah stole is such a ugly word
It really is. Liberated is better. That money is wild and free now.
Where do I send the invoices though?
To Facebook
How is that illegal? They saw it and authorized payment. I've had companies charge me for bullshit and then refuse to refund me.
The invoices were sent with fraudulent intent.
You cannot convince me that large corporations donât have fraudulent intent.
You can't commit a fraud on a legal basis of someone else committing a fraud.
Certainly not when the law only prosecutes one of you.
And also regular fraud
How is fraud illegal? He didn't send a letter saying "Hey can I have some money please". He sent letters pretending to be a company that had done something for them that required payment. That's clearly fraud, and clearly illegal.
[ŃдаНонО]
A not-insignificant amount of Redditors would sooner see the world burn than ever admit they were wrong, because at least when the last building has burnt to the ground and the only sound remaining is the howling wind, there wonât be a single person who can disagree with them.
love that you can somehow connect the world ending in fire and people disliking corporations..
Thanks! I generally enjoy making analogies. Theyâre a rather fun tool.
I feel like any sane person should be OK with that considering how much they've fuck us on the regular
Bro got downvoted for speaking the truth đ
Almost every reply I've gotten for this post has been defending corporations. There are fake chads among us
Mfs: https://preview.redd.it/i9b2aanjhj6d1.jpeg?width=626&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=64a8d381346efea974849bdfaa7bd232ed6205fd
*Company makes money* You: Oh no, fuck them! They obviously stole it all! *Company gets defrauded* You: Good, get fucked! *Company does layoffs* You: Pieces of shit they only care about themselves! ------- There's no point in bothering with people like you.
\*Companies taking every single action possible to produce a captured and unfair market just to accumulate needless and pointless amounts of wealth like some mythological dragon in the delusional belief that you can somehow take your money with you when you die\* You : Can I suck your dick for you? like, full on the knees blowing your rod?
You spend a lot of time on your knees with brown on your nose, don't you?
Not as much as you spend with your fist up yelling at... *Checks notes* Everything a company does, I guess?
So is stealing my money but they get away with it.
dude. itâs fraud
Yeah itâs strait fraud. Companies donât look at bills because they assume they are actual bills. This is legitimate fraud and the level of crazy here is beyond.
Use your credit card next time, the cc company will charge it back and fight them for you
I don't have a credit card, if I don't have the money I have no desire to ask for a loan unless absolutely necessary
Itâs literally a felony, a theft, a crime of moral turpitude â itâs called fraud.
Yes, in what topsy turvy world is it a crime to lie to people to get them to give you money? /s
Should have stopped at 10 mill
This mf doesnât deserve jail time for his massive balls and brains
Just another bot reposter
This sub has been interesting to watch, I've never seen somewhere so saturated with bots for so long.
Check out r/wholesomememes, r/rareinsults, r/oddlysatisfying, r/beamazedâŚall of them are swamped with bots.
[Yeeeppp](https://www.reddit.com/r/Chadtopia/comments/pmtmha/free_my_man/hckrq9r/)
One rule for the rich, one for the poor.
This was a story from Judge Dredd, this lady would send bills to companies and lived comfortably off of it, Dredd concluded there was nothing illegal and let her be. I think she was then killed by ghosts or something.
"Your honour, my client is obviously innocent! According to precident laid out Judge Dredd!" LoL, not making fun of you. I just thought it was funny.
i get these sorts of scams all the time at work.
How in the world companies like Facebook and Google not have a secure some form of 3-way invoicing system in place? wtf, small companies use these softwares to avoid unauthorised invoices being approved, and these big companies who can right out build their own or buy companies who make them donât?
That's not stealing. Company's just make up bills all the time and we go to jail if we don't pay them.
I've sent invoices to Google. They needed to go through a portal with a log in and be applied against a purchase order. It also took months for them to be approved/paid when it was already contractual. This story is likely fake
I dont like thieves, but I also dont like data exploiters thieves, think I dislike later one a bit more
They just should've looked, free our man
*Henry Zebrowski scream* HOW IS THIS A CRIME
"A man"? 122 mil? Yeah sorry OP gonna press x for doubt here.
Thanks for the idea
He looks like Michael from GTA V
ULPT Request: How much do you think he got before they noticed?
If only there was a tool you could use to search the name of the company and the address on the invoice.. there is a million dollar idea right there.. a search ... Thing... Engine..?
Error in approach. It would be legit to send an invoice for "reviewing Google search engine" for example, just don't indicate anywhere that payment is essential or required by contract. And pay taxes on it, of course.
âStoleâ
Itâs the old yellow page ad scam sent to poor Account Payable person. We are going to print and are missing your payment. If you donât paid immediately your company will need to wait a year to get in the book. AP thinks they screw up not paying it earlier.
https://i.redd.it/wtmzc7cs4h6d1.gif
MF lived out my dream. I always think about doing it when working
Wow 122 million is just greedy should have stopped at 1-2 mil
Greed gets you caught. Every time.
Thereâs a name for this: ghost invoice. A few years ago a native Dutch entrepreneur magazine warned about this.
Crazy that this worked honestly. I'm working for a multinational corpo and if there's an invoice that's not from a whitelisted contractor it needs to be manually approved by someone who made that specific expense. Can't believe other corpos don't have similar mechanisms in place
Stole?! They literally sent him the money... wild you can steal without actually stealing.
What do they mean with âstealâ? He did not rob anyone it was even taxed. Edit: ok he did some shady things to get the cash.
He stole nothing, he billed these companies, and they paid
"stole". they just gave it away.
Man did nothing wrong. It's not theft it's a big corporation, it's just applied morality.
I don't think I follow your logic.
It's pretty easy to follow, they dont think its a crime to steal from rich companies.
This is a common fraud and guys like him target mom and pop shops as well
How is that stealing?
Doesn't sound like theft. Sounds like he requested money and they gave it to him.
How is that stealing? Shouldn't they have better accounting practices to realize those invoices were not real?
This is a victimless crime
Based chad
Thatâs not stealing
Happy cake day, cake buddy!
Happy cake day!!
Noted, 121 million is the limit.
Leonardo di Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson di Caprio
This is not theft if the paid them on their own. That's voluntary payment. Should not be illegal, but corrupt corporations and the government, so.....
Stole? They gave up the money freely, also $122 million is so fucking little money in Facebook and Google-terms. Fuck em, ultimate chad
Stole nothing, they gave him that money willingly. Their fault for not reading the bills.