Former GameStop VP to Serve Four Years in Prison for Stealing $1.7 Million from Company
posted Saturday Mar 16, 2013 by Nicholas DiMeo
GameStop does a lot of things with all of the profit it makes by stealing money from the actual developers of games. Sometimes it's used for entering new markets and sometimes it's used as incentive for up and coming developers. At any rate, the last thing the board of directors and shareholders want the money to go to is a sneaky Vice President's pockets.
Former GameStop VP of corporate communications, Frank Christopher Olivera, was charged and sentenced to over four years behind bars for taking over $1.7 million from the used game retailer. How? The Texan native formed a fake company, Cloud Communications LLC, that he used as a middle man to move funds to his account from GameStop's. Olivera even went as far as to come up with a phony employee who would assist in the transactions between the Cloud and GameStop.
The US Attorney's Office said in a statement,
Olivera defrauded Gamestop by submitting false and fraudulent invoices for vendor services from a fictitious company, 'Cloud Communications LLC,' which he owned and controlled... 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.
Obviously the FBI got wind of this, caught Olivera and arrested him. The ex-VP quickly pled guilty and now has to repay the $1.7 million, plus an additional $134,651 for court costs. Sources say he's returned "most" of the original stolen funds. I guess we'll have to find another way to cease GameStop's evil ways. Stealing the money probably wasn't a good idea to begin with. Perhaps we can start with not buying used games.
