Former Microsoft worker sentenced to almost 1 decade in prison for BTC tax fraud

Quick Take

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• A former engineer for Microsoft has recently been sentenced to almost 1 decade in prison for stealing more than $10 million in digital value from his previous employer. 

• The 26-year-old Ukrainian citizen who lives in Washington, Volodymyr Kvashuk used the accounts and identities of his fellow colleagues to steal and then sell “currency stored value“, otherwise known as CSV.

A former engineer for Microsoft has recently been sentenced to almost 1 decade in prison for stealing more than $10 million in digital value from his previous employer. The 26-year-old Ukrainian citizen who lives in Washington, Volodymyr Kvashuk used the accounts and identities of his fellow colleagues to steal and then sell “currency stored value“, otherwise known as CSV.

Through this, Kvashuk was able to make it look like it was his co-workers that were responsible for the malicious activity.

Furthermore, he also used a bitcoin mixing service to further fog up the paper trail leading back to him.

Through this, he was able to tell the internal revenue service that the almost $3 million worth of cryptocurrency that passed through his account gift has been sent from another relative. 

The United States Department of Justice has said the following on the matter:

“Over the seven months of KVASHUK’s illegal activity, approximately $2.8 million in Bitcoin were transferred to his bank and investment accounts. KVASHUK then filed fake tax return forms, claiming the Bitcoin had been a gift from a relative.”

The Ukrainian was fired from Microsoft in June 2018 after working there from August 2016.

An employee of the United States attorneys office, Brian Moran said that “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.”

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