Digital Bank Robbers Make Off With $6.7 Million

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Hackers stole 6.7 million from a bank in South Africa. The funny part? After sending the money to dummy accounts, they withdrew it all via ATMs. :eek:

To pull off the heist, the hackers created a backdoor into one of the bank's computers. From that hacked computer, they were able to access the rest of the network and issue the commands to distribute the $6.7 million to different accounts owned by the thieves. Those accounts were promptly emptied via ATM visits.
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That's a lot of cash. How much is in an individual ATM, 10 or 20 thousand? You would have to empty a lot of them to withdraw 6.7 million. Even then, someone would surely be noticed standing there receiving that much cash in one transaction. To do something like this you would need a network of people. A large network. Some are bound to talk and get caught.

Also, this should be big news, but I haven't seen it reported anywhere else yet. So I'm a bit suspicious.
 
rivertown_rat said:
That's a lot of cash. How much is in an individual ATM, 10 or 20 thousand? You would have to empty a lot of them to withdraw 6.7 million. Even then, someone would surely be noticed standing there receiving that much cash in one transaction. To do something like this you would need a network of people. A large network. Some are bound to talk and get caught.

Also, this should be big news, but I haven't seen it reported anywhere else yet. So I'm a bit suspicious.
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I saw it on slashdot I think yesterday or day before. This obviously wasn't done with just 1 or 2 people. Had to have been a small group of people at least to make off with that much cash. Coordinated enough to know which ATMs they should go to, and how much they should have.

Worthy of making a movie I say.
 
Is that US dollars, because yeah WTF even with 1000 people withdrawing $300 per day, it'd take the better part of a month to remove it all.

Were these Nigerian dollars, so you go to an ATM and it shoots out trillion dollar bills like toilet paper?
 
sfsuphysics said:
Is that US dollars, because yeah WTF even with 1000 people withdrawing $300 per day, it'd take the better part of a month to remove it all.

Were these Nigerian dollars, so you go to an ATM and it shoots out trillion dollar bills like toilet paper?
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WTF has 300 daily withdrawal limits? I am sure when they were setting up these fake accounts that they were enabling higher withdrawal limits.
 
Yeah, where did this $300 daily limit come from...you guys have money in your bank accounts when you're withdrawing, right?
 
Dreaz said:
Yeah, where did this $300 daily limit come from...you guys have money in your bank accounts when you're withdrawing, right?
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Banks are getting stingy with our money... thankfully I've never been hit by it yet but I do know some co-workers who can only do $300 a day, and others who got letters in the mail saying they can only do $500 now... "for your safety and protection."
 
Every card I've owned can only withdrawal $300 at the ATM per day. Pretty sure limits like these are the norm in the US.
 
My checking account has daily cash withdraw limit of $500. They side it was a federal law they where abiding by. I can make a check./use card for as much as i want/ afford.
 
Certain ATM like 3rd party ones have limits. Bank of America has $500-$1000 limit on non-branch ATMs. Branch ATMs can have up to $5,000 limit. Anything higher has to be done inside.
 
Banks are all different. I know a buddy used his ATM once to pull out 6,000$ to buy a Jeep.... (he said he could empty his account if he wanted according to his bank/CU)

I'd imagine they targeted a bank/atm services that could do similar..
 
i just wish my dam debit card wouldn't cap it self at $75 on gas, any thing else is fine but $1000 of stuff form newegg and np try to buy a full tank of gas when gas is high and cant do it wtf.but yea back on topic tats a lot of money and had to take a lot of time to pull off even if they got 10k a atm they still had to go to 67 of them that's a lot of atms and one of them has to have video of them
 
tunatime said:
i just wish my dam debit card wouldn't cap it self at $75 on gas, any thing else is fine but $1000 of stuff form newegg and np try to buy a full tank of gas when gas is high and cant do it wtf.but yea back on topic tats a lot of money and had to take a lot of time to pull off even if they got 10k a atm they still had to go to 67 of them that's a lot of atms and one of them has to have video of them
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that's 670 ATMs. Probably a good portion of the ATMs in Phoenix. I assume the South African banks farm out filling the ATMs like American banks do, and someone would have noticed all their ATMs were out of money at the same time.
 
I usually pull out $500 at a time from my ATM...so $300 is definitely not a universal limit.
 
i'm curious how they created all these dummy accounts and where did they have them send all the atm cards. maybe it works differently their but they gotta mail the atm cards to somewhere.
 
You do not mail cards to anyone, you print them on a machine. They are easy to copy and make, when you deal in this kind of trade you can afford 2000$ machine and thousands of blank cards.. The people who do this are usually part of pretty elaborate networks. They have alot of people working for them. It is easy to withdraw the money fast because you simply make tons of cards and distribute them to all the people and they go clean out ATMs all over the country. Then you let them have a cut like 10% and they bring the rest of the cash to you or your drop points. You do not even need to be there for instance you can send someone the information to make their own cards on their own machines. It can be a form of payment for a prior service or a service specific to that theft. Obviously they had insiders and those insiders where probably each given a hand full of cards to max out.

Bank accounts a easy to make in the US and even easier in more corrupt countries.
 
The $300.00 limit was true about 15 years ago. I can remember in the 70's when they were a "New" thing it was $200.00. I also thought it was still $300/day until a year ago when I accidentally hit the 3 instead of the 2 and out it came! Now it is dictated by your bank so your mileage may vary.
 
In Canada most basic accounts start with a $500 dollar limit.

All you have to do is go to the bank and asked them to increase which I had to do.

Try buying a $1500 HD tv with a limit that low!

And no not interested in putting it on my credit card!
 
If they were clever enough to create dummy accounts I am sure they found a way around some pesky withdrawal limit at individual ATM machines. Not your typical South African heist.
 
It's mostly to protect the account owner incase someone gets ahold of your ATM/Debit card. That's why I leave my limit at $500/day since everything goes on my credit card. <3 Chase rewards and cashback.
 
NickJames said:
It's mostly to protect the account owner incase someone gets ahold of your ATM/Debit card. That's why I leave my limit at $500/day since everything goes on my credit card. <3 Chase rewards and cashback.
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Hell yeah! I thought this news was insane then realized that we're talking about South Africa.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
In Canada most basic accounts start with a $500 dollar limit.

All you have to do is go to the bank and asked them to increase which I had to do.

Try buying a $1500 HD tv with a limit that low!

And no not interested in putting it on my credit card!
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Then go into the fucking bank and take money out for christ sakes.

The whole point of limits, is to protect themselves (and in a way the consumer) from having some anonymous person draining an account in one transaction.

Don't want to put in on a credit card? Why not use your atm/debit card then? That way the money goes directly from bank to TV purchase, you don't even have to carry $1500 around waiting to be mugged.
 
Most banks there have a ~629 US dollar limit per day (R5,000) for ATM transactions and a monthly set limit too (R25,000). So these guys most likely had dozens of cards and maxed out each one... you would need to complete 10,000 transactions to make this work. ATMs there also do not carry a lot of cash... so I would guess 10k USD at most in those systems... so they would still need to nail over 600 ATMs if they could max out each ATM.

Most likely it was a lot of people and/or these guys managed to change the withdrawal limits.... and they do have the criminal manpower there for something like this.
 
:p
Makaveli@BETA said:
In Canada most basic accounts start with a $500 dollar limit.

All you have to do is go to the bank and asked them to increase which I had to do.

Try buying a $1500 HD tv with a limit that low!

And no not interested in putting it on my credit card!
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Seriously?

Like the other guy said, walk in the bank ffs!

Unless your a millionaire who carries that as 'pocket change' your impulse spending habits are out of control.
 
NickJames said:
It's mostly to protect the account owner incase someone gets ahold of your ATM/Debit card. That's why I leave my limit at $500/day since everything goes on my credit card. <3 Chase rewards and cashback.
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This.
I'd much rather get 1%-5% back (depending on what/where I'm buying) by using my credit card, and let the money sit in the back for a few more weeks.
Only tough part is trying to remember which card to use to get the most cash back :)
 
NickJames said:
It's mostly to protect the account owner incase someone gets ahold of your ATM/Debit card. That's why I leave my limit at $500/day since everything goes on my credit card. <3 Chase rewards and cashback.
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Chase can suck it, not only did they fire my father 2years away from retirement, but they stole 1500$ from m escrow account and had to get a lawyer to make em give it back ><
 
How interesting that people find the most difficult part of this heist is the withdrawal of money from ATM. :confused:

I wonder more about where the 6.7 million came from. Was it money they vacuumed from legitimate accounts, or from the banks general fund, or just virtual money that then became real.

And afterwards, how did they create all the secondary phony accounts to get the cash out? And how can this not be traced?

Someone on the inside almost without a doubt.
 
Didn't this happen in the movie Office Space??? :D

Very interesting and I agree, the guys filling up ATMs should have raised red flags when so many were empty... unless these guys spread across Europe and reduced their footprint as much as possible...

Or they withdrew from a rich oil nations atm's and said they were buying a supercar down the street?
 
ValeTudo said:
Didn't this happen in the movie Office Space??? :D

Very interesting and I agree, the guys filling up ATMs should have raised red flags when so many were empty... unless these guys spread across Europe and reduced their footprint as much as possible...

Or they withdrew from a rich oil nations atm's and said they were buying a supercar down the street?
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Maybe they went to the Gold Bar machine in Saudi Arabia.
 
Here's some more information:

While the rest of the world was making resolutions and sleeping off a night of partying, a South African cybercrime gang rang in the New Year by stealing more than $5 million from a government bank.

In a 72-hour span ending shortly after 6:00 a.m. Jan. 3, the crooks made off with 42 million rand (about $5.2 million) from the state-owned Postbank, part of the South African Post Office that holds about 4 billion rand in deposits, the South African newspaper Times Live reported

South Africa's National Intelligence Agency and the police have launched an investigation but no suspects have been named. The bank said none of its more than 4 million customers were affected.

The high-tech heist began in the end of December, when members of the criminal gang began opening accounts across the country with Postbank. Over the New Year holiday break, the syndicate infiltrated a Rustenberg Post Office employee's computer. From there, the crooks were able to access Postbank's server and make fraudulent deposits to the numerous accounts they'd just set up.

With privileged access to the bank's network, the cybercrooks increased the withdrawal limits for their new accounts and then, for 72 hours starting at 9:00 a.m. on Jan. 1, made massive withdrawals from ATMs across the country. By the time the holiday break was over, so was the robbery.

A banking security expert told Times Live that Postbank's network and security systems are "in desperate need of an overhaul."
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I think that last quote is an understatement.
 
Dreaz said:
Yeah, where did this $300 daily limit come from...you guys have money in your bank accounts when you're withdrawing, right?
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Gas station ATMs and ATMs in remote locations usually have limits of between $250 and $300 because the bank/ATM owner wants to maximize the number of transactions (and the fees they collect). The ATMs at bank locations typically do not have limits.
 
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