Former GameStop VP Gets 51 Months For Mail Fraud
Frank Christopher Olivera is going to spend the next half-decade in the slam for clipping GameStop to the tune of nearly two million bucks.
In early 2010, GameStop Vice President of Corporate Communications said the company would "guilty plea [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98077-GameStop-Subpoenaed-Over-Deceptive-Ads] to one count of mail fraud arising from a scam in which he bilked GameStop of nearly $2 million.
"Beginning in July 2009 and continuing to April 2011, Olivera defrauded Gamestop by submitting false and fraudulent invoices for vendor services from a fictitious company, 'Cloud Communications LLC,' which he owned and controlled," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas said in a statement. "In addition to creating a fictitious company, Olivera also created a fictitious person, 'Jennifer Miller,' to serve as the point of contact at Cloud Communications. Upon receipt of payments from Gamestop, Olivera would deposit the checks into a bank account held by Cloud Communications and then would transfer the fraudulently obtained funds into his personal bank account."
The scheme netted Olivera more than $1.7 million; his guilty plea earned him 51 months in a federal slammer and an order to repay the stolen money (most of which he's already paid back) plus $77,275 in additional restitution.
The moral of the story? With razor-thin margins on new game releases, GameStop needs a thriving preowned market to survive, and infrastructure limitations and increasing download sizes means that despite its complaints, the game industry will remain reliant on a healthy retail sector for the foreseeable future. Wait, that's not right. Don't steal! Yeah, that's it. Don't steal.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice [http://www.justice.gov/usao/txn/PressRelease/2013/MAR2013/mar7olivera_frank_mail_fraud_sen.html]
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Frank Christopher Olivera is going to spend the next half-decade in the slam for clipping GameStop to the tune of nearly two million bucks.
In early 2010, GameStop Vice President of Corporate Communications said the company would "guilty plea [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98077-GameStop-Subpoenaed-Over-Deceptive-Ads] to one count of mail fraud arising from a scam in which he bilked GameStop of nearly $2 million.
"Beginning in July 2009 and continuing to April 2011, Olivera defrauded Gamestop by submitting false and fraudulent invoices for vendor services from a fictitious company, 'Cloud Communications LLC,' which he owned and controlled," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas said in a statement. "In addition to creating a fictitious company, Olivera also created a fictitious person, 'Jennifer Miller,' to serve as the point of contact at Cloud Communications. Upon receipt of payments from Gamestop, Olivera would deposit the checks into a bank account held by Cloud Communications and then would transfer the fraudulently obtained funds into his personal bank account."
The scheme netted Olivera more than $1.7 million; his guilty plea earned him 51 months in a federal slammer and an order to repay the stolen money (most of which he's already paid back) plus $77,275 in additional restitution.
The moral of the story? With razor-thin margins on new game releases, GameStop needs a thriving preowned market to survive, and infrastructure limitations and increasing download sizes means that despite its complaints, the game industry will remain reliant on a healthy retail sector for the foreseeable future. Wait, that's not right. Don't steal! Yeah, that's it. Don't steal.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice [http://www.justice.gov/usao/txn/PressRelease/2013/MAR2013/mar7olivera_frank_mail_fraud_sen.html]
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