A Seattle-based e-commerce developer decided to embezzle over $300,000 from employer , inspired by the movie Office Space.
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In 2018, Ermenildo Valdez Castro was hired by e-commerce giant Zulily as a programmer to work on its customer checkout department. According to The Register , the 28-year-old has been successfully leading the project ever since. However, in 2022, Castro decided to take more than his contractually agreed-upon salary by maliciously corrupting Zulily.com 's checkout system .
Through his initial edits, Castro was able to manipulate customer orders and redirect shipping costs to a Stripe.com account that he owned. In a masterful and deceptive maneuver, the developer modified the code to double customers’ shipping costs and then sent half of that money to his own Stripe account. He believed he could get away with it because there was no guarantee that Zulily or its customers would even notice the change. He also managed to change the prices of items on Zulily.com so that he could purchase them at incredibly discounted prices.
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With these three malicious programming scams, the programmer managed to illegally raise a total of $302,278.52. However, the company's fraud team noticed this. Consequently, this resulted in his suspension and ultimately his dismissal. His inspiration from the movie Office Space became known when he returned his work laptop
The award-winning 1999 black comedy is set in a conventional software company in the 1990s. Michael Bolton's character devises a virus that infiltrates the accounting system to loot tiny amounts of money. Over the course of a single weekend, an unintended glitch in the code allows $300,000 to be stolen.
It may have been a happy coincidence that Castro stole a similar amount from Zulily—but a close examination of his laptop revealed an incriminating OneNote document that described his deliberate plan to steal shipping costs. In the document, he called his venture the “OfficeSpace project.”
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Unfortunately for Castro, the Zulily building didn't burn down before his fraud was exposed. He will be held accountable for his wrongdoings on January 26 in King County Superior Court in Seattle. Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely that Zulily will recover the stolen funds, as the developer admitted to law enforcement that he had already squandered all the money on questionable investments.
