Court: Lithuanian must be extradited to US in $100 million email fraud case

VILNIUS (Reuters) - A Lithuanian accused of swindling Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million through an email fraud scheme must be extradited to the US to stand trial, a court in Vilnius ruled on Monday.

Evaldas Rimasauskas denies the allegations and will appeal against the decision to a higher court, his lawyer said.

According to a US indictment made public in March, Rimasauskas is charged with wire fraud and money laundering, each of which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, and identify theft, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of two years.

Rimasauskas has been in custody since March at the request of US prosecutors.

“Material presented to the court provides enough evidence to think that Rimasauskas could have committed the deeds that he is accused of,” the judge, Aiva Surviliene, said as he read the verdict.

But Rimasauskas’s lawyer, Snieguole Uzdanaviciene, said the evidence provided by US prosecutors was too vague and would not be considered evidence in a Lithuanian court.

She also called for Rimasauskas to be investigated in Lithuania rather than the United States.

“We are talking about a Lithuanian citizen, and material presented to the court describes him as acting on Lithuanian territory, not elsewhere, and using means and tools which were within territory of Lithuania,” she said.

The US indictment did not name the companies involved, but Uzdanaviciene told reporters Facebook and Google were both mentioned in the US extradition request. The Lithuanian court decided against making the request public.