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Sumitomo plot

pbBen Ando/bbr /BBC crime reporterbr /pimg src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45510000/jpg/_45510245_cctv_soca226.jpg" align="left" width="226" height="170" alt="CCTV images of two men on street" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"pbTwo men have been convicted for their part in trying to pull off a £229m heist at the Sumitomo Mitsui Bank in London./bpIn one of the biggest attempted bank thefts in Britain, theyused hi-tech equipment to try to steal money from the accounts of big businesses.pHugh Rodley, 61, of Twyning, Tewkesbury and sex shop owner, David Nash, 47, from Durrington, West Sussex, were foiled only at the last minute by the complexities of inter-bank money transfers.pOn the early evening of 16 September 2006, two men arrived at the reception desk of the Sumitomo Mitsui Bank in London. One asked for the bank's security supervisor, Kevin O'Donoghue.pHe had a distinctive European, possibly Belgian, accent but the receptionist thought nothing of it. After all, this was the London branch of a major Japanese merchant bank with global interests and investments.pWhat she did not know was that the two men led upstairs by security chief O'Donoghue were expert hackers - and they had come to the bank to implement the first stage of the most audacious, and potentially lucrative, cyber snatch in history.pPolice do not know how long the gang had been planning the operation. And those now convicted are certainly not those behind the plan.pbStealing passwords/bpWhen questioned, Kevin O'Donoghue, 34, from Birmingham, claimed that he had been coerced into helping and that his family had been threatened. He later admitted a charge of conspiracy to steal. pCCTV images showed him laughing and joking as he showed the two Belgian cyber-thieves to a terminal in one of the trading offices.img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45509000/jpg/_45509857_hughrodley_pa.jpg" align="left" width="226" height="170" alt="Hugh Rodley" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"pJan Van Osselaer from Belgium and Gilles Poelvoorde from France, who admitted a charge of conspiracy to steal, had come prepared. pThey used a USB memory stick to instal "keylogger" software on various workstations that recorded every button pressed by users.pA few days later, they returned and downloaded the data from the keylogger programmes. They now had the usernames and passwords of every bank employee who had used the infected computers.pBut Kevin O'Donoghue had made some mistakes. He had tampered with some of the CCTV cameras - even cutting the wires on one - in an effort to cover the gang's tracks. Other employees started to wonder why he had started enquiring about creating extra access badges.p"He didn't do a very good job," said one source at the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) "In fact, you'd hardly describe him as the kingpin."pA few weeks later, on Friday 1 October, the two were back. It was time to launch their plan.p /quot;iLuckily the bank realised very quickly that something was wrongquot;/ibr /bBill Hughes brSOCA director/bbr /br /pUsing the employee IDs and passwords they had obtained, they attempted 10 cash transfers from the bank to accounts in other banks in Spain, Dubai, Hong Kong, Turkey and Israel.pThe cash was to come from the accounts of major corporations such as Toshiba and Nomura Holdings - the gang knew they would have plenty in them.pBut something went wrong. The cash did not move.pbBasic error/bpThe next day, a Saturday, they were back to try again. This time they attempted more similar transfers, but included extra accounts in Liechtenstein and Singapore. Again, they failed.pAll in all, they tried to steal £229 million. But they had made a basic error in filling in the wire transfer information boxes. The plan was starting to unravel.pThe following Monday, when staff logged in to their computers, they immediately noticed something was amiss. The transactions were there, and some of the computer cables had been cut.pManagers at the bank acted quickly and called the police.p"Being able to get in there early and quickly gave us vital help in closing this case," explained Soca director Bill Hughes.p"Luckily the bank realised very quickly that something was wrong."pThe investigators quickly zeroed in on O'Donoghue who admitted his involvement when shown the CCTV.pTracing other members of the gang was to be a long and drawn-out process.pPictures of the two hackers were circulated, and they were traced to Belgium.img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45509000/jpg/_45509851_davenash_pa.jpg" align="left" width="226" height="170" alt="David Nash" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"pFollowing the electronic paper trail to the bank accounts that were to have received the money led to numerous dead ends, but eventually to four people.pThese were Hugh Rodley, a self-styled lord of the manor, and his business partner Bernard Davies; David Coyne, also known as David Nash, and Inger Britt Marie Malmros - a Swedish national enjoying the sunshine in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. She was cleared of all charges against her.pBernard Davies died before the trial began.pThe men and woman, had all fronted various companies - with names like Mediatel International PLC, Investorscan and Furzefield.pThey were all companies with websites, contact addresses and registered names but they did not do anything. They were just fronts for illegal money laundering.pThese company accounts, and many others like them, were to be used to filter and clean the dirty money stolen from Sumitomo Mitsui Bank.pbDubai mystery/bpOn the Monday after the attempted transfers, two unknown individuals went into a bank in Dubai and tried to find out whether money had reached their account. It had not and they left. They were never traced.pRodley too was wondering where the money was, and starting to get desperate, he went from his Gloucestershire home into the town of Cheltenham, and asked to borrow the fax machine in a TV and electrical goods shop.pHe sent a fax to a bank in Dubai, asking after the cash and urging that the transfer go ahead.pIt did not.p /quot;iOrganised criminals will seek to pervert and corrupt your people and use them against youquot;/ibr /bBill Hughes/bbr /br /pMalmeros was arrested in Spain and extradited to England for trial.pRodley and Nash were arrested in Spain and Gloucestershire; detectives in Belgium seized Poelvoorde and Van Osselaer.pPoelvoorde will complete his sentence in Belgium where he is already serving a five-year term for an unrelated fraud offence.pBut in some ways, the case at Snaresbrook Crown Court leaves more questions than answers.pWho actually planned it Rodley and the launderers had no contact with O'Donoghue and the hackers - so who was pulling the strings And who were the mysterious couple in the bank in DubaipThe Sumitomo Mitsui Bank heist was a failure - thanks to bank security and errors made by the thieves.pDetectives are reluctant to say how close it came to success - but they are certain that similar attempts will be made in future.p"Organised criminals will seek to pervert and corrupt your people and use them against you," warned Bill Hughes.p"Plus they will increasingly try to use technology to help them. We've since foiled two other similar attacks.p"This was a very real attack that was very well planned and it came very close."phrpThis article is from the a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk"BBC News website/a. #169; British Broadcasting Corporation/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=EnQ9moDDP7A:nP3CoLjb8XI:F7zBnMyn0Lo"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?i=EnQ9moDDP7A:nP3CoLjb8XI:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=EnQ9moDDP7A:nP3CoLjb8XI:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?i=EnQ9moDDP7A:nP3CoLjb8XI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?a=EnQ9moDDP7A:nP3CoLjb8XI:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~ff/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/bbcnewstechnologyfullfeed/~4/EnQ9moDDP7A" height="1" width="1"/