Inside man in failed £72m electronic heist jailed

A former HSBC worker who tried to steal £72m ($141m) from the bank through an audacious electronic heist has been jailed for nine years. Jagmeet Channa, of Church Road, Ilford, was sentenced to 90 months for conspiracy to defraud and nine years for money laundering at a sentencing at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, after …

[Andy Barber]

Mr Bean?

OK Channa is actually Chick Pea, but it's still a yummy Ligume.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Nathan

Yes Nathan, it's that easy to steal 72million pounds from a bank. They never notice. And they don't help each other look out for fraud on that scale. Clever you.

<pats Nathan on the head>

[Chris Miller]

No surprise

The 'security' of many (?most) banks' money transfer systems depends on no-one knowing two or three username/password combinations which are often: (a) insufficiently complex; (b) rarely changed; (c) regularly shared; or (d) all three. Can you say 'Société Générale'?

I'd bet that for every unsuccessful example of these 'heists' that's made public, there are numerous 'successes' that are quietly hushed up.

PS Channa was definitely 'Mr Bean' and not 'Freebie and the Bean'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Muppet

He got caught out so quickly because of the bleeding obvious... for god's sake man, even shoplifters know that you don't 'work' in front of CCTV cameras.. for 72m perhaps you could have at least tried to bloody plan it properly in the first place?

My thoughts float to Richard Pryor turning up to work in a lambo...

What a muppet. At least, the concept of Karma and the world balancing itself out is working well... through his own stupidity, said stupidity has been removed from useful society.

Do not pass go. Do not collect 72m. Now pick up that soap...

[Pyros]

Pffth.

He looked like he withdrew money from ONE account. Silly banker--in for seven and a half years. (Yes, I counted.)

If I was in position, I'd do a driftnet scheme over savings accounts. Do the math, and you'll find that you'll get a less than a cent past the first .00$. Now multiply that extra fragmentary change by, let's say, 10,000 accounts. You'll get a value at hundreds, but done over a sucession of months... that also adds up.

The question remains is how to funnel that fragmentary change into someplace secure.

[Carl]

Richard Pryor?

I think it was a Ferrari 308

[night troll]

@ Nathan Hobbs

And that he left a huge negative balance on the account he transfered out of. Did he not think it would be noticed straight away by the bank, let alone the owner of the account? What a prat.

[peter]

Not Theft

The group could have used it as gearing for spread betting, that way £72m becomes about £2 Billion, shorting some stocks for a 10% return over 24 hours.

That isn't the plan, just a sketch.

[Steve]

As a HSBC customer...

...I'm disappointed he didn't get away with it - they were robbing me for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have it covered already.

AFAIK the IT procedures have been in place for years to detect any attempt at harvesting the leftovers part pennies. These are collected by the bankers themselves.

[Adam H]

If he'd only listened to the wise words .

You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

[Luke]

Worth a shot

I am surprised he got as far as he did – there must be have been alarm bells ring like mad in some security office.

Two things surprise me more:

1 – If there were others involved, what were they doing to deserve a cut? And why didn’t he just do it solo?

2 – 9 Years? Bit harsh really when murderers and rapists get away with less.

Banks are pretty much fair game I say - nice to hear about someone trying to steal money from them for a change rather than the other way around.

[HFoster]

Haha

In his face! Silly bugger.

[Anonymous Coward]

No

> If I was in position, I'd do a driftnet scheme over savings accounts

Good luck then. That particular scheme is quite well covered by security, it's not as if it's hard to detect. We see you. Go right ahead buddy. >:->

[Anonymous Hero]

90 Months !?

Why not just say 7.5 years? 90 months, indeed...pfft.

Paris, 'cos she'd have thought you meant until the end of the universe.

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*

All these silly ideas... The best way by far to steal money is to *be* a bank. You get to rinse all your customers for even smelling like they might go overdrawn, and quietly bung backhanders at those who kick up a fuss so it doesn't all end up pear shaped. If the house of cards does fall down around your ears, and you look like getting into financial trouble, along comes Gov.org to bail you out, all the senior employees go off to other cash-cows with big, fat Golden handshakes in their sky-rockets, and you and I are left holding the bill...

I mean come on guys, Stealing money from these archaic systems is stupendously easy when you have the access and knowhow (that chap recently who lost a stupendous amount of money and the bank threw him to the wolves, you don't think he didn't make both himself and most particularly the bank a SHITLOAD of money first, do you?), but vastly easier to do so legally and legitimately...

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming to a screen near you soon

Dear Sir,

You may soon have read or seen on TV that £70m failed to be stealed from HSBC. They are informed wrong. £170m was stealed. £100m is in account here in Nigeria and we need help of honest man like you......

[Anonymous Coward]

Did this in the mid-80's

To prove to auditors how cr@p the new IT systems was, I swiped $15million over night.

Auditors response - ah,well. You're an inside man. That wouldn't happen. And if it did, we check your own bank account for 'activities' and we'd get you that way.

Dumb f^cks - I'd put the money in a mates bank account he opened that morning and make sure he telexed it away the following day.

And for those wondering, I did it on a test system, not our live one.

But it's good to see people are still doing it :-0

Coat - yep, the one with tickets and suntan lotion in it....