THELOGICALINDIAN - Volodymyr Kvashuk has been handed a nineyear book for 18 felonies including artifice and money bed-making The Ukrainian architect defrauded Microsoft of added than 10 actor application Bitcoin to adumbrate funds
A Ukrainian software architect has been bedevilled to nine years in bastille afterwards ambidexterity Microsoft of added than $10 million. Volodymyr Kvashuk transferred funds into Bitcoin as allotment of the busy ploy.
Ex-Microsoft Employee Absconds With Millions
Over a aeon of seven months during his time at Microsoft, Kvashuk blanket millions of dollars in “currency stored value,” a appellation generally acclimated to accredit to assets such as agenda allowance cards.
Currently based in Renton, Washington, he was answerable at a U.S. District Court bygone for 18 felonies, including assorted counts of fraud, money laundering, character theft, and filing apocryphal tax returns.
Kvashuk’s crimes complex burglary Microsoft allowance cards and reselling them via online marketplaces. At first, he took about $12,000 afore adopting the stakes to abduct millions of dollars.
The 26-year-old was begin to accept acclimated analysis email accounts of his co-workers to awning his tracks. Once he’d committed the crimes, he advantaged in absurd purchases, including a $1.6 actor beach abode and $160,000 Tesla car.
Following a jury’s confidence in February 2024, Kvashuk was accustomed a nine-year book bygone and ordered to pay $8,344,586 in damages. He additionally faces displacement from the USA.
Bitcoin as Medium for Tax Fraud
Kvashuk’s case has fatigued absorption to his use of Bitcoin in an attack to burrow his activity.
He transferred $2.8 actor in BTC into his coffer and advance accounts, application a cryptocurrency aerialist service to adumbrate his aisle of transactions. Due to Bitcoin’s accessible blockchain registering every transaction on a ledger, bond casework such as CryptoMixer are accepted accoutrement amid those who appetite to advance aloofness on the network.
Kvashuk additionally evaded taxes on the Bitcoin funds, claiming that he’d accustomed the bill from a ancestors member. It’s the aboriginal accepted archetype of tax artifice involving Bitcoin in the USA.
Speaking of the trial, and accurately Kvashuk’s use of Bitcoin, IRS-CI Special Agent Ryan L. Korner said:
“Kvashuk’s bent acts of burglary from Microsoft, and consecutive filing apocryphal tax returns, is the nation’s aboriginal Bitcoin case that has a tax basic to it. Simply put, today’s sentencing proves you cannot abduct money via the Internet and anticipate that Bitcoin is activity to adumbrate your bent behaviors. Our circuitous aggregation of cybercrimes experts with the abetment of IRS-CI’s Cyber Crimes Unit will coursing you bottomward and authority you answerable for your wrongdoings.”
