Reports confirm that Michael Baxter, 62, used his position at Verizon to purchase equipment from Cisco stating it was to repair critical infrastructure when he was in fact selling it to fund an opulent lifestyle of foreign holidays and even plastic surgery for his girlfriend.
Baxter began a four year jail term for sending out hundreds of false failure reports for equipment, some costing up to $40,000 apiece, and then selling them to resellers. In addition he also had Verizon purchase around half a million dollars worth of kit from Cisco directly, again apparently for critical network operation. This too was sold to the reseller market.
In addition to his sentence of four years Baxter was ordered to pay Cisco $2,333,241.18 in restitution and $462,828 to his former employer. The ruling will most likely bankrupt the defendant. Questions have been raised about the internal accounting systems of the companies concerned and why Baxter was able to get away with it for so long.
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