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Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

If he was a proxy how did he return $50 million?

It's not clear how he returned. We don't know if the accounts of companies were frozen or where the money went, etc... Or did you believe he returned it in Cash? Or maybe transferred from bank accounts where no one knew? It's not how the financial system works.

Here in LT we had some few series about this man and some possible things how it went. This case wasn't public, but every news site had about 15-20 stories about it in two years time.

You're missing the point of my question- if he was just a proxy he wouldn't be in control of the assets, so they'd have to go after the person he was proxying for to get the funds. The fact that he was able to return them shows that he was more than a proxy.

Or you know, he had $50M of his own that he "returned" (he was supposedly a businessman), while still being just a proxy to the other that actually stole the real stolen money.

I doubt he would have turned to fraud or become a proxy if he had $50M of his own.

Your theory is the US just snatched some multi-millionaire off the street and got them to confess to some crimes they didn't commit?

Here in the US if you have that much money you can get away with crimes you did commit.

A foreign multimillionaire. Those are worth less, especially if their state owes the US some favors (or doesn't like him in the first place).

That said, sure, having $50M to return points to him being complicit -if not the mastermind- on this. Especially since I don't think we're explicitly told he was multimillionaire to begin with, just a businessman, which can even mean a guy that sells lemonade at a street corner (as long as he owns the stand).

But, and this is what I wanted to point out, returning $50M, doesn't make it entirely implausible.

This boils down to the question: can a multimillionaire ever be successfully framed for something?

I say, why not?

I'd say there's a good chance he was a proxy who had full control of many/all the bank accounts involved, but also had little knowledge that they existed or were set up in his name.

Hmm, that's another possibility, yes! Him having control (as the accounts were made in his name) but no prior knowledge of them or what they'd be used for.

(Though this begs the question how come the real con hadn't gotten the money by then, perhaps they did it piecemeal e.g. to not draw attention, which might explain why only $50M were left).

> We don't know

Returned assets means returning assets one controls under court supervision. He controlled $50 million that he could move under court supervision. Getting confused about whether it was wired is totally irrelevant.

Better sources than a criminal’s wife would be the unsealed indictement [1] and official release [2].

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/950556/...

[2] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/lithuanian-man-pleads-g...

If he wasn’t a proxy, where did he spend the other 70 million?

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