Author Topic: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery  (Read 1584 times)

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Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« on: March 14, 2016, 02:52:33 AM »

Anatomy of a bank robbery

Tribune Desk
March 12, 2016


 
The suspected perpetrators of the $100 million heist of Bangladesh Bank funds deposited at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York this February opened dollar-denominated accounts last May.

And then they sat and waited.

For what? A long weekend.

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2016, 02:53:31 AM »

On May 15, 2015, Enrico Teodoro Vasquez, Alfred Santos Vergara, Michael Francisco Cruz and Jessie Christopher Lagrosas opened US dollar bank accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), a Philippine bank.

The accounts remained untouched until February 4, 2016, the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) reports.

The fraudulent transfer orders were timed for February 4 this year, a Thursday, so that the next day Bangladesh Bank would be closed for the weekend.

Saturday is a common weekend for Bangladesh and the Philippines, Sunday is a weekend there and Monday, February 8, fell on Chinese New Year, a non-working holiday in the Philippines.

It mostly went according to plan.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2016, 02:55:25 AM »

The perpetrators of the robbery certainly “had deep knowledge of [Bangladesh Bank’s] internal workings, likely gained by spying on bank workers,” Reuters quoted security experts as saying.

They managed to steal payment transfer credentials which were used to order transfers out of a New York Fed account held by Bangladesh Bank, Reuters reports.

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2016, 02:57:49 AM »

The heist

On February 4, a Thursday, $81m from the account of Bangladesh Bank at the New York Fed was ordered to be transferred to the four RCBC accounts – $30m was transferred to Lagrosas, $19.99m to Vergara, $25m to Vasquez and $6m to Cruz.

The funds were credited to the accounts via straight-through process after the transactions passed internal validation criteria. The funds were cleared through US-based correspondent banks Citibank, The Bank of New York Mellon and Wells Fargo.

The same day, Lagrosas withdrew $22.73m and deposited it in the US dollar account of William Go DBA Centurytex Trading, an account which was opened that day, PDI reports.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2016, 02:59:10 AM »

Between February 5 and 13, remittance company Philrem remitted the funds, now converted into Philippine pesos, to the bank accounts of Chinese national Weikang Xu, Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co and Bloomberry Hotels Inc (Solaire Resorts).

By the time Dhaka sent off frantic messages to halt the transaction, there was nobody in the office in Manila to respond.

On February 9, RCBC received a Swift message from BB requesting payment to be stopped and the accounts to be frozen for investigation. But withdrawals from the accounts totalling $58.15m had already been processed by RCBC.

Some $15.2m was deposited in the account of Philrem, $42.93m in Go’s dollar account and another $20m in Philrem, PDI reports.

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2016, 03:01:42 AM »

On February 16, BB Governor Atiur Rahman sought the assistance of Philippine counterpart, Governor Amando Tetangco Jr of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, PDI reports.

Three days later, the Philippines’ Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) began a probe of bank accounts relating to Weikang Xu (believed to be a junket operator), Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co and Solaire Resorts.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer broke the story of a possible $100m digital bank robbery of BB funds on February 29.

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #7 on: March 14, 2016, 03:03:06 AM »

The next day, the Court of Appeals in the Philippines, acting on an urgent petition from the AMLC, ordered four Philippine banks RCBC, East West Bank, Banco de Oro and Philippine National Bank – to freeze for six months the bank accounts of Michael Francisco Cruz, Jessie Christopher Lagrosas, Alfred Santos Vergara, Enrico Teodoro Vasquez, William So Go, Centurytex Trading, Kam Sin Wong (aka Kim Wong) and all related accounts.

Over a month after the fraudulent transfer was made, BB issued a press statement saying its Financial Intelligence Unit had been working with the AMLC to retrieve the money.

Finance Minister Muhith said he had been unaware of the lost funds.

In the end, the fraudsters successfully got their hands on $81m and pulled off one of the biggest bank heists in history.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2016, 03:06:14 AM »

Spelling mistake

About $20m was retrieved from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh Bank Executive Director Subhankar Saha recently said.

But a Reuters report filed yesterday suggests the Sri Lankan story could have a twist to it.

A spelling mistake on one fraudulent bank transfer instruction for $20m to be sent to a Sri Lankan non-profit organisation was held up because the hackers misspelled the name of the NGO.

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #9 on: March 14, 2016, 03:06:49 AM »

The full name of the non-profit could not be learned.

But one of the officials said the hackers misspelled “foundation” in the NGO’s name as “fandation,” prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction.

The Reuters report said the recovered amount referred to by BB officials was the halted payment.

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2016, 03:07:16 AM »

The resulting halt in transfers totalled funds worth $850m and $870m, one of the officials said.

Approximately $81m was successfully transferred to the Philippines and has still not been retrieved.

The scale of the crime and the involvement of so many business entities in the scam has so alarmed the financial services industry that the Philippine Senate is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the matter on March 14.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2016, 03:11:48 AM »

Deep knowledge

The fraudulent transfer orders made by the electronic swindlers who looted $81m of Bangladesh Bank money show that the fraudsters evidently did their homework.

Every one of the false payment instructions was made in the name of big-ticket Bangladeshi development projects, the PDI reported.

For example, one transaction for $25m was supposedly ordered by Bangladesh Bank on behalf of the government’s The Kanchpur, Meghna and Gumti 2nd Bridges Construction project.

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #12 on: March 14, 2016, 03:12:22 AM »

The amount was remitted to the account of Vasquez purportedly for the payment of a “loan” from Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica).

A payment for $30m to Lagrosas, an IT professional, likewise under a Jica “loan,” was supposedly ordered on behalf of Dhaka Mass Rapid Trans Dev project.

A $6m payment order on behalf of an IPFF project cell was supposedly to pay for Cruz’s consultancy fees.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #13 on: March 14, 2016, 03:12:50 AM »

Another payment worth $19m was supposedly from Bheramara Combined Cycle Power Plant Development Project with Vergara as a beneficiary, citing “engineering consulting fees.”

It remains to be seen how the fraudulent orders slipped past the US financial system.

The transactions involved the New York Fed, where BB is an account holder, and US correspondent banks Citibank, The Bank of New York Mellon and Wells Fargo Bank.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #14 on: March 14, 2016, 03:13:41 AM »

A minor tit for tat between the New York Fed and BB ensued, with Finance Minister AMA Muhith saying on March 8 that a case would be filed against the Federal Reserve, a day after the US institution denied its systems had been breached.

The Fed said it followed normal procedures when responding to requests that appeared to be from Bangladesh Bank, which were made and authenticated over Swift, Reuters reported.

Belgian-based Swift, a member-owned cooperative that banks use for account transfer requests and other secure messages, declined to comment on specifics of the case, the report added.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #15 on: March 14, 2016, 03:14:24 AM »

Security experts said the cyber criminals had to gather information about Bangladesh Bank’s transfer order procedures so that their actions would go unnoticed.

They had to have stolen credentials for processing transfers and “probably spied on BB staff to get a deep understanding of the central bank’s operations,” according to experts in banking fraud.

Kayvan Alikhani, a senior director with security firm RSA, told Reuters that in addition to user names and passwords for accessing Swift, the hackers likely needed to obtain cryptographic keys that authenticated the senders.

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Republic Act 8485 (Animal Welfare Act of 1998, Philippines), as amended and strengthened by House  Bill 6893 of 2013--- violation means a maximum of P250,000 fine with a corresponding three-year jail term and a minimum of P30,000 fine and six months imprisonment

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Re: Anatomy of a (central) bank robbery
« Reply #16 on: March 14, 2016, 03:15:12 AM »

Such certificates can be copied and used by impostors if they are not properly secured, he said.

And this is not the first time such a crime has been attempted.

In a round of robberies disclosed last year, a group dubbed the Carbanak gang hacked into a number of banks around the world, seized control of computers that access Swift, then ordered fraudulent transfers.

“The genius of the attacker in the Carbanak case is taking the time to learn directly from the victim and thus bypass fraud prevention measures through sheer mimicry,” Juan Guerrero, a researcher with Kaspersky Lab which studied the campaign, told Reuters.

http://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/

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