Charges were filed last week against a former Zulily software engineer accused of stealing more than $300,000 from Zulily.com through a scheme involving software edits to its checkout page.
According to documents filed by the Seattle Police Department, Ermenildo Valdes Castro told detectives that the plot was inspired by a similar plot in the 1999 film Office Space.
Castro began malicious editing in the spring of 2022, according to court documents. He reportedly had three specific ways Castro stole from the company by compiling his website that customers use to purchase products.
- Created software code that applied a small percentage of Zulily’s customer checkouts and sent all shipping charges associated with those purchases to a Castro-controlled Stripe.com account, resulting in the theft of $110,240.71.
- After Zulily began investigating the matter, Castro created an alternate code to double-charge certain customers for shipping, sending shipping to both Zulily’s and Castro’s Stripe.com accounts, resulting in the theft of $151,645.50. I was born.
- Castro changed the price of an item on Zulily.com and bought it for $1.1 cent, resulting in the theft of $40,842.31.
In total, Castro stole $302,278.52. He faces his two counts of first-degree theft and his one count of first-degree identity theft.
In late May, Zurily’s fraud team learned that Castro was making significant price adjustments on merchandise sold and shipped to Tacoma residences, according to police. The following month, he was fired after a member of the company’s corporate security team visited his home.
Between March 1st and June 2nd, Castro ordered a total of 1,294 items for a total value of $41,096.20. Police said Castro only paid $253.89 for the item.
Seattle police included a synopsis of the movie “Office Space,” which Castro said inspired him, in a certificate to identify a possible cause.
“In the Initech office, the insecure Peter Gibbons hates his job…his best friends are two software engineers, Michael Bolton and Samir Nagheenanajar, who also hate Initech…he is Michael and Samir, they decide to plant a virus in the office to embezzle a portion of each financial operation’s cents into Peter’s account using the banking system. However, Michael miscalculated the decimal places in the software and siphoned more than $300,000. The desperate trio try to work things out, get their money back, and avoid going to jail.”
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