Bangladesh Bank robbery
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York blocked the remaining thirty transactions, amounting to US$850 million, due to suspicions raised by a misspelled instruction.
[4] The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network is used to communicate with the bank holding the foreign exchange account in order to withdraw, transfer, or deposit the currency.
The funds were then transferred to a foreign exchange broker to be converted to Philippine pesos, returned to the RCBC and consolidated in an account of a Chinese-Filipino businessman;[11][9] the conversion was made from 5 to 13 February 2016.
[12] It was also found that the four U.S. dollar accounts involved were opened at the RCBC as early as 15 May 2015, remaining untouched until 4 February 2016, the date the transfer from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was made.
Chinese New Year is a non-working holiday in the Philippines and a SWIFT message from Bangladesh Bank containing similar information was received by RCBC only a day later.
The incident was treated by Bangladeshi police authorities as a cold-case until the suspiciously similar 2016 Bangladesh central bank robbery.
[15] The Philippines' National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) launched a probe and looked into a Chinese-Filipino who allegedly played a key role in the money laundering of the illicit funds.
[12] AMLC has filed a money laundering complaint before the Department of Justice against a RCBC branch manager and five unknown persons with fictitious names in connection with the case.
[24] FireEye's Mandiant forensics division and World Informatix Cyber Security, both US-based companies, investigated the hacking case.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported that agents have found evidence pointing to at least one bank employee acting as an accomplice.
The FBI also alleged that there is evidence that points to several more people as possibly assisting hackers in navigating the Bangladesh Bank's computer system.
[25] The government of Bangladesh has considered suing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in order to recover the stolen funds.
[27] Some security companies, including Symantec Corp and BAE Systems, claimed that the North Korea-based Lazarus Group, one of the world's most active state-sponsored hacking collectives, were probably behind the attack.
They cite similarities between the methods used in the Bangladesh heist and those in other cases, such as the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014, which U.S. officials also attributed to North Korea.
The agency claimed that BeagleBoyz is a threat actor group under the North Korean government's Reconnaissance General Bureau, and have been active since 2014.
"[30] The U.S. has charged a North Korean computer programmer, Park Jin Hyok,[31] with hacking the Bangladesh Bank, alleging this was carried out on behalf of the regime in Pyongyang.
Lorenzo V. Tan, RCBC's president, said that the bank cooperated with the Anti-Money Laundering Council and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas regarding the matter.
[35] Tan's legal counsel has asked the RCBC Jupiter Street branch manager to explain the alleged fake bank account that was used in the money laundering scam.
[37][38] On 6 May 2016, despite being cleared of any wrongdoing by the bank's internal investigation, Tan resigned as President of RCBC to "take full moral responsibility" for the incident.
[43] The Bangladesh Bank continued its efforts to retrieve the stolen money and had only recovered about US$15 million, mostly from a gaming junket operator based in Metro Manila.
