Former Microsoft Employee Arrested In Scam And Crypto Theft Case

By Rishma Banerjee

A former employee of Microsoft has been arrested in a scam and crypto theft case according to reports published on July 17. Cryptocurrencies and their current regulations are still not enough to keep all related criminal and illicit activities at bay.

Volodymyr Kvashuk, a twenty-five-year-old Ukrainian, was arrested for scheming a theft of ten million dollars ($10M) in cryptocurrencies. According to reports, he even used the stolen funds to buy a Tesla car and a house worth around one hundred and sixty thousand dollars ($160,000) and one hundred and seventy thousand dollars ($1,700,000) respectively.

Apart from that, his bank records show that he received almost three million dollars ($2.8M) in his account during the seven months of his scheme. The ex-Microsoft employee was also accused of selling cryptocurrency Microsoft gift cards on the internet. These cards could be exchanged against Microsoft products.

According to the United States attorney’s office in Seattle, the suspect was involved in the testing of the company’s online retail sales and was therefore susceptible to corruption. Kvashuk’s attorney has not responded to the allegations or the comment by the US attorneys. If convicted, Kvashuk faces up to 20 years prison and a $250,000 fine.

This April, several cryptocurrency holders alleged that their Microsoft-based email services — such as Outlook, Hotmail and MSN were attacked by hackers prying on their crypto holdings. One of the victims claimed that the hackers were successful in resetting the configurations of his entire account on crypto exchange Kraken due to the breach of his email account.

Microsoft confirmed that the breach had occurred during the first months of this year. These incidents have recently somewhat tainted the name of the tech giant in the crypto community. It is high time that they look into crypto security and regulations more closely.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.

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