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Eight held for £1.3mn cyber theft from bank
Eight held for £1.3mn cyber theft from bank
Guardian News and Media/London
Police have arrested eight men in connection with a £1.3mn theft by a gang who remotely took control of the computer system of a Barclays bank branch. |
A man posing as an IT engineer gained access to the branch on April 4, fitting a keyboard video mouse (KVM) device, which enabled the gang to remotely transfer funds to bank accounts under its control.
Barclays reported the theft at its Swiss Cottage branch in north London on April 5.
The modus operandi of the theft appears almost identical to a plot targeting a Santander branch in Surrey Quays, south-east London, which resulted in 12 men being arrested last week.
In that case a bogus engineer also fitted a KVM device to a computer at the branch but the Metropolitan Police foiled the plot as the men were about to be in a position to execute the operation.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said links between the two plots were being looked into but none of those arrested yesterday in connection with the Barclays theft were among last week’s arrests.
The eight men are currently being questioned at London police stations on suspicion of conspiracy to steal from Barclays and conspiracy to defraud UK banks.
Detective inspector Mark Raymond of the Met’s central e-crime unit (PCeU) said: “These arrests were achieved working in partnership with the virtual task force, an unique information sharing cyber collaboration between the PCeU and the UK banking sector.
“Those responsible for this offence are significant players within a sophisticated and determined organised criminal network, who used considerable technical abilities and traditional criminal know-how to infiltrate and exploit secure banking systems.”
One central London property was deployed as a control centre for the gang to work from, police said. Officers recovered property including cash, jewellery, drugs, thousands of credit cards and personal data in raids on addresses in Westminster, Newham, Camden, Brent and Essex.
The arrests came after a long-term intelligence operation by the PeCU, working with Barclays. After the thefts were reported to Scotland Yard, an investigation was launched and a search of the Swiss Cottage branch uncovered a KVM switch attached to a 3G router connected to one of the branch computers.
A KVM switch is a hardware device, which can be purchased for about £20, that allows users to work remotely on their computer systems.
Four people have been charged with conspiracy to steal in connection with the attempted theft from Santander. They are Lanre Mullins-Abudu, 25, Dean Outram, 34, Asad Ali Qureshi, 35, and Akash Vaghela, 27.