Volodymyr Kvashuk was sentenced to 9 years in prison, and will be charged restitution of $8.3 million.
The Xbox gift card came with a string of 25 letters and numbers. The digits, known as a 5x5 code, were sent in an email, but they were no different from the numbers and letters etched onto the gift cards hanging off tall racks near the checkout aisle at CVS or Target, arrayed in a Rubik's Cube of colors. These stores sell them on behalf of Apple, Applebee's, Disney, Domino's, and pretty much every other company you can think of, including Microsoft Corp., which markets its cards under the Xbox brand. The cards themselves, of course, are worthless, but each 5x5 code corresponds to a dollar amount. In this case the code, DD9J9-MXXXC-3Y6XD-3QH2C-PWDWZ, was worth $15 toward the purchase of anything that Microsoft sold online—video games, Office and Windows software, Lenovo laptops, Sonos speakers, and the like.
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