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| picture source: http://www.atmms.com/ |
When you think of the term bank robber you might immediately envision a person with a mask on, standing in a bank with their gun drawn pointing it at a bank teller who's frantically trying to comply with the robber's commands. Well you can kiss those days goodbye.
No guns needed! Nowadays you can rob a bank without ever stepping foot in a bank. Welcome to the 21st century bank heist brought to you by a group of cyber-criminals who stole approximately $45 Million dollars in a matter of hours.
[Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch called it "a massive 21st-century bank heist" and compared its size to the Lufthansa heist in the late 1970s immortalized in the film "Goodfellas." Lynch said the fraudsters had moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world.
A security analyst said it was the biggest ATM fraud case she had heard of.
Seven people are under arrest in the U.S. in connection with the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from ATMs using bogus magnetic swipe cards. The accused ringleader in the U.S. cell, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Pena, was reportedly murdered in the Dominican Republic late last month, prosecutors said. More investigations are ongoing and other arrests have been made in other countries, but prosecutors did not have details.
An indictment unsealed Thursday accused the eight of being members of the New York cell, saying they withdrew $2.8 million in cash from hacked accounts in less than a day. One of the suspects was caught on multiple surveillance cameras, his backpack increasingly loaded down with cash. Others took photos of themselves with giant wads of bills as they made their way up and down Manhattan.
Lynch said the cells would take a cut of the money then launder it through expensive purchases or ship it wholesale to the global ringleaders, but didn't say where they were located. Prosecutors said the scheme involved attacks on two banks, Rakbank, which is in the United Arab Emirates, and the Bank of Muscat in Oman. Hackers obtained debit card data, eliminated withdrawal limits on the accounts, created access codes and then sent a network of operatives fanning out to rapidly withdraw money in multiple cities, authorities said.]source: huffingtonpost.com
