Ex-corporate communications and public affairs executive Frank Christopher Olivera pleads guilty to defrauding game retailer from 2009 to 2011.
Former GameStop vice president of corporate communications and public affairs Frank Christopher Olivera has pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $2 million from the nation's largest game retailer.
According to a federal indictment obtained by The Dallas Observer, Olivera regularly moved funds from GameStop to Cloud Communications LLC from July 2009 through April 2011.
Cloud Communications existed solely on paper, the documents say, with Olivera transferring the funds to his personal bank account.
In Olivera's guilty plea, he admitted to one count of mail fraud, which carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. A GameStop representative declined to comment in a statement to Joystiq, but confirmed that Olivera was terminated last year.
Eddie Makuch (Mack-ooh) is a News Editor at GameSpot. He works out of the company's Boston office in Somerville, Mass., and loves extra chunky peanut butter.
guess its funny to see Gamestop stealing from itself for a change. I worked 2 shifts there about 6 years ago. I thought it would be cool to work game-retail, since I'm a gamer. I hated it. My job was to arrange the game shelves after kids came in and ruined it - pretty much like building sand castles all day only to wait and expect people to step on 'em.
HAHA Cornhole!
I feel sorry for the employee's. I can tell they hate Gamestop sometimes
@DerekXSpence , may his bottom forever be inconvenienced by the prickling of tiny thorns and his booty valve "corned".
Got 7 cents for my Guitar Hero 3. Started working there and now I know why.. if Guitar Hero didn't exist our lives would be so much easier.. but we'd miss out on a fantastic episode of South Park..
7 Like buying games for 9 bucks then reselling them for 55 bucks, the whole gadamn company is an embezzlement scheme
And to think people who deal with lots of money still have the temptation to get some for themselves.
4 Like Oh, no - a $250k fine! What will he do with the other $1.75M? Maybe pay bail and buy a nice yacht.
This is really going to help their faulty standing with the smart part of society. I also love to see greedy people burn, or in this case get their justice.
2 Like @tightwad34 WTH does one guy being caught for embezzlement have to do with Gamestop's biggest consumer problems? As a reminder, those include gutted new games, pushy desperate salespeople egged on by preorder quotas, and a buy/sell profit average of 300% which builds customer resentment.
I meant they have a bad reputation for various things and any sort of hit like this won't help them one bit.
1 Like I was kind of being sarcastic, but what I should have said was they had a higher up being a corrupt d-bag. Doesn't matter if he stole from Gamestop or someone else. Also means he isn't the only one.
@tightwad34 Oh, you really were being sarcastic. heh. Because of the second statement, I assumed the first was a related "they fired a bad man, so they're a good company" plea. My bad.
12 Like What about all the millions that Gamestop stole from gamers by falsely selling games that were clearly used as "new"?
@nurnberg just wondering, is there actually proof, like any articles, of that or is it your personal experience because I'm pretty sure my games are new.
Two times, I have bought "new" games at Gamestop where the disk was scratched and dirty. Tons of people tell the same story. Many current and former Gamestop employees said that employees can bring new games home to play them, and still sell them as "new" games later. The evidence is over-whelming.
It's nice... it's in Grapevine Mills Mall in Grapevine, Texas. I think Grapevine is the corporate HQ of Gamestop. but not sure.
1 Like After reading this I cancelled my Pre-Order of Hitman: Absolution from Gamestop. Thanks for the Sniper Challege game Gamespot. In turn, I'll just buy the game from Best Buy.
Moron are you not happy that you have a job? why do this crap they will always catch you.. unless you are part of the Illuminati.. crap giving him ideas now he might join them.
1 Like @Kerrizma Ya they have been embezzling money from customers using something called DLC for years now. Why no charges? ;p
9 Like @Kerrizma Now, now, I think there are enough people like him who work at EA already. No need to add even more of their kind.
8 Like It's nice to know that while they're ripping us off, their own VP's are ripping them off.
2 Like Twelve years ago, the fat cats at gamestop saw it fit to fire every single Funcoland employee in the country. Thousands of people, from game advisers to store managers, lost their jobs. I mean no offence to the good people who staff gamestops all over the world, but I have nothing but contempt for the fat cats that sit at the top and play with the lives of thousands as if those decisions were as inconsequential as ones made in a video game.
One day the working class will rise up and wrest control away from these social parasites.
wsws.org
@somatzu Actually, at the location where I worked when I sold my soul to GameStop, there was a low-level manager who had been a FunCoLand hire
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