Bangladesh Bank money laundering case

The Bangladesh Bank robbery, also known colloquially as the Bangladesh Bank heist, took place in February 2016, when instructions to steal US$951 million from Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of Bangladesh, were issued via the SWIFT network. Five transactions issued by hackers, worth $101 million and withdrawn from a Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, succeeded, with $20 million traced to Sri Lanka (since recovered) and $81 million to the Philippines (about $18 million recovered). The New York Fed blocked the remaining thirty transactions, amounting to $850 million, at the request of Bangladesh Bank. It was identified later that Dridex malware was used for the attack.

The 2016 cyber-attack on the Bangladesh Central bank was not the first attack of its kind. In this "cyber heist", thieves tried to illegally transfer US$951 million to several fictitious bank accounts around the world. In 2013, the Sonali Bank of Bangladesh was also successfully targeted by hackers who were able to cart away US$250,000. In 2015, two other hacking attempts were recorded, a $12 million theft from Banco del Austro in Ecuador in January and an attack on Vietnam's Tien Phong Bank in December that was not successful. In all these cases, the perpetrators are suspected to have been aided by insiders within the targeted banks, who assisted in taking advantage of weaknesses within the SWIFT global payment network.

Capitalizing on weaknesses in the security of the Bangladesh Central Bank, including the possible involvement of some of its employees, perpetrators attempted to steal $951 million from the Bangladesh central bank's account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sometime between February 4–5 when Bangladesh Bank's offices were closed. The perpetrators managed to compromise Bangladesh Bank's computer network, observe how transfers are done, and gain access to the bank's credentials for payment transfers. They used these credentials to authorise about three dozen requests to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to transfer funds from the account Bangladesh Bank held there to accounts in Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

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