Microsoft employees convicted of 18 felonies after stealing gift cards worth over $10 million

Volodymyr Kvashuk is a Ukrainian citizen living in Washington State, USA. He was a contract employee of a Microsoft contractor who mainly helped Microsoft test online retail platforms.

As a software engineer, Volodymyr later became a full-time employee of Microsoft, whose main job is to test Microsoft’s online retail platform, which is the Microsoft Store.

Volodymyr had access to Microsoft’s digital gift card system while participating in the test, so he quietly added a $12,000 gift card to his account.

The stolen gift card can be directly purchased and deducted in the Microsoft store. For example, the purchase of certain hardware devices for thousands of dollars with a gift card is equivalent to no cost.

Originally, Volodymyr merely increased the denomination of gift cards in his account many times, which is not easy to find for Microsoft stores with a lot of daily transactions.

But then Volodymyr thought that he found an opportunity to get rich, and began to increase the denomination of gift cards frantically and then sell the gift cards online at a lower price.

The money sold was used to buy a lakefront home and Tesla electric cars, while Volodymyr also bought a large amount of bitcoin for storage in order to avoid being found abnormal.

These bitcoins were sold for cash and transferred to the bank. In the tax return, he also claimed that bitcoins came from relatives.

As of the time of the incident, Volodymyr’s illegal activities lasted only seven months, but during these seven months, he even generated a gift card of up to $10 million.

After peddling more than $2.8 million in cashback to his account through Bitcoin alone, more fraudulently acquired wealth was used to buy various high-end items.

During a recent trial in the United States District Court, local prosecutors accused Volodymyr of various felonies, including fraud, money laundering, identity theft, and more.

Although Volodymyr believes that he completely hides his identity through the Bitcoin mixing service, the cybercrime department still finds the Bitcoin path in detail.

The allegations made by local prosecutors were basically felonies, and after five days of trial, the U.S. District Court decided to try again on June 1, 2020.

These felonies could eventually put Volodymyr in jail for up to 20 years, and his lakefront home, Tesla electric car, and bitcoin could also be confiscated by police.