A software engineer in Washington state is accused of writing malicious code that rerouted customers’ shipping fees to his bank account instead of the company's.
Castro, 28, is now charged with two counts of felony theft and one count of felony identity theft in King County Superior Court. Prosecutors allege Castro set up three separate computer schemes, ultimately stealing $302,278.52 from Zulily.
Then, at the end of February, Castro changed the code to enrich himself, the affidavit states: When tens of thousands of sales were made, shipping fees were sent to an account he personally controlled. That scheme, which affected “a small percentage of Zulily customer check-outs,” netted him over $110,000, according to court documents.
Meanwhile, Castro was allegedly working another con. On May 27, he started emailing a woman he would later say he’d met on the dating app Tinder and had been seeing for a month, the affidavit states. In the emails, police say, the woman sent Castro links to online shopping carts filled with Zulily merchandise she wanted. Castro allegedly replied to confirm he’d purchased the items she’d identified in what police described as “a ‘wish list’ of sorts.
Steve Carney, the company’s director of cybersecurity, reported that he’d found a document on the laptop titled “OfficeSpace project,” which allegedly laid out the scheme to steal the shipping fees.
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