Former GameStop VP Pleads Guilty to Major Fraud
Chris Olivera admits to siphoning $2 million out of GameStop and into his own bank account.
As GameStop's Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Chris Olivera had a number of responsibilities on his desk, among them dealing with invoices from vendors: receiving them, processing them and submitting them for payment. But it turns out that Olivera is not exactly what you'd call a moral, stand-up dude.
He cooked up a scheme to line his pockets by creating a fake company, "Cloud Communcations LLC," complete with a fake company rep by the name of Jennifer Miller. He then submitted invoices from Cloud Communications to GameStop and, in his capacity as veep of the benjamins, directed that they be paid. The scheme ran for almost two years, from roughly July 2009 until April 2011, and ended up putting $1,965,900 in his pocket.
Unfortuately for Olivera, his greed eventually caught up to him. On or around April of last year, GameStop began to suspect that he was cooking the books and called in the authorities, who put it all together and clapped him in irons. He pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud last week, which doesn't sound so bad, but a single count of mail fraud carries with it a maximum penalty of 20 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
So remember, kids: Crime doesn't pay, unless you're smart enough to pull it off without getting caught.
Source: Dallas Observer [http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2012/11/former_gamestop_vp_pleads_guil.php]
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Chris Olivera admits to siphoning $2 million out of GameStop and into his own bank account.
As GameStop's Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs, Chris Olivera had a number of responsibilities on his desk, among them dealing with invoices from vendors: receiving them, processing them and submitting them for payment. But it turns out that Olivera is not exactly what you'd call a moral, stand-up dude.
He cooked up a scheme to line his pockets by creating a fake company, "Cloud Communcations LLC," complete with a fake company rep by the name of Jennifer Miller. He then submitted invoices from Cloud Communications to GameStop and, in his capacity as veep of the benjamins, directed that they be paid. The scheme ran for almost two years, from roughly July 2009 until April 2011, and ended up putting $1,965,900 in his pocket.
Unfortuately for Olivera, his greed eventually caught up to him. On or around April of last year, GameStop began to suspect that he was cooking the books and called in the authorities, who put it all together and clapped him in irons. He pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud last week, which doesn't sound so bad, but a single count of mail fraud carries with it a maximum penalty of 20 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
So remember, kids: Crime doesn't pay, unless you're smart enough to pull it off without getting caught.
Source: Dallas Observer [http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2012/11/former_gamestop_vp_pleads_guil.php]
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