Fraud IT exec gets caught red handed by Microsoft Word metadata

Hicham Kabbaj was a senior IT exec at Rakuten Marketing, a leading online marketing firm, in New York. He was responsible for IT technical operations and engineering. In order to make some quick money, Kabbaj created a shell company called Interactive Systems. Later, he billed Rakuten Marketing for various hardware and software including firewall and 16 servers. Since he is the IT executive at Rakuten Marketing responsible for approving such bills, he will approve his own company’s invoices. He even made Rakuten Marketing pay a monthly retainer for Interactive Systems!

Over past four years, he earned $6 million by committing the same fraud again and again. He raised around 52 invoices. To cover his fraud, he did not mention serial numbers of the hardware in most of the invoices. In some invoices, he mentioned serial numbers of hardware that already belonged to Rakuten Marketing.

During investigation, investigators found that four of the Interactive Systems’ invoices were written in Microsoft Word, and the Word file metadata revealed that it was created using Kabbaj’s copy of Microsoft Word.

Kabbaj has now confessed his crime and agreed to return the whole $6 million money. Also, he may end up serving 20 years in Jail.

via: The Register