A Ukrainian web developer and former engineer at Microsoft has been sentenced to 9 years imprisonment for 18 count charges associated with a $10 million bitcoin fraud. He was convicted in February, according to an earlier report.
Volodymyr Kvashuk, 26, reportedly worked with Microsoft for two years as an engineer but chose to blackmail a Microsoft testing program for an online sales platform, like Microsoft gift cards, which are “currency stored value” that he sold out online and got paid in bitcoin.
The Ukraine citizen allegedly spent his ill-gotten bitcoin buying a luxurious home worth $1.6 million at a lakefront and a Tesla car for $160,000.
In a bid to cover his atrocity, Kvashuk used the email accounts of other Microsoft employees as a blind to the real source of the enormous funds he transferred to his bank accounts. In seven months, Kvashuk had transferred $2.8 million to his investment and bank accounts. Even filling fake tax forms in the claim that the bitcoins were a gift from his relative.
The convict claimed that his intention was geared towards a particular project for the good of the company and not to defraud Microsoft in any way.
However, commenting on the enormity of the matter, Brian Moran, an Attorney for the U.S., stated, “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.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft started to investigate Kvashuk in May 2018 and sacked him one month after the investigation. But the office of the attorney saw the case as highly sophisticated and too technical, thereby requiring the attention of skilled cybercrime experts of law enforcement agents. To this IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Ryan Korner said;
“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.”
