Engineer Uses Bitcoin to Defraud Microsoft of $10M, Evade Taxes
Bitcoin is regularly blasted by regulators and the IRS for its use in illicit crime such as money laundering or tax evasion. Unfortunately, a story involving a former Microsoft engineer who used the cryptocurrency to mix over $10 million he had defrauded the company out of, doesn’t help that case. Here’s how one man managed to steal so much money right out from under the tech giant’s nose, and how they got caught using Bitcoin […]
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A U.S. court in Seattle has sentenced a former Microsoft engineer to 9 years in prison after finding him guilty of 18 federal felonies relating to his elaborate scheme to defraud the tech giant $10 million. In passing the judgment, the court blasts Volodymyr Kvashuk, a software engineer and citizen of Ukraine, for attempting to mask digital evidence through the use of bitcoin mixers and the illegal use of accounts and passwords of fellow employees to aid this scheme. Sophisticated case According to court records, Kvashuk, a citizen of Ukraine, had been convicted in February 2020 on several....
A former Microsoft software engineer and co-founder of Buycoins Africa Tomiwa Lasebikan says some Nigerians expatriates are now using bitcoin to circumvent the country’s overvalued exchange rate when sending remittances. According to Lasebikan, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s fixed exchange rate of $1:380 is robbing recipients 20-30% of their remittance value each time they retrieve funds. At the time of writing, the parallel exchange rate of one dollar to the Naira is 1:480, according to Abokifx. Similarly, importers that are hamstrung by the country’s rigid foreign....
The former Microsoft software engineer was sentenced Monday for an elaborate criminal scheme involving bitcoin and digital gift cards.
Microsoft has been digging deep into the data created by its $120bn treasury unit in search of real-world use cases where blockchain could cut costs. Culling through this trove of information, Microsoft's newly appointed principal program manager and lead blockchain engineer, Marley Gray, searched for pain points and labor intensive processes that were adding complexity and error to his company's operations. But the fact that an executive like Gray would be allocating time to such an endeavor is perhaps not surprising. Since helping establish Microsoft Azure's blockchain-as-a-service....
Microsoft also Exploring Blockchain Technology for the IoT "World of Distributed, Connected Devices"
Since starting to accept Bitcoin earlier this month, Microsoft has not started offering Bitcoin acceptance globally, or for all of its products. Currently, users that wish to load their Microsoft accounts with Bitcoin are limited to $1,000 a day and $5,000 maximum. Microsoft seems to be waiting for further clarification on Bitcoin regulation before moving forward with their Bitcoin plans. Like many other companies, Microsoft is willing to try Bitcoin acceptance, which has clearly defined tax treatments, but is reluctant to do anything else thus far. BitPay Chairman Tony Gallippi has....