04 Mar 2009
The organisers of a plan to steal £229m in a hacking attack on Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui's London branch - the biggest ever attempted bank heist in this country - have been found guilty.
Self-styled "Lord" Hugh Rodley was convicted of conspiracy charges dating back to 2004, while Soho sex shop owner David Nash was also convicted at Snaresbrook Crown Court.
Swedish national Inger Malmros was cleared of all charges.
Security guard Kevin O'Donoghue and computer hackers Gille Poelvoorde and Jan Van Osselaer from Belgium have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal from the bank.
O'Donoghue smuggled Van Osselaer and Poelvoorde into the bank under the guise of a poker game, jurors were told.
Once inside the building, they tampered with computer systems, giving them access to the holdings of many major companies including Toshiba International, Nomura Asset Management and Sumitomo Chemical UK.
They made several attempts to electronically transfer up to £12.5m at a time around the world, but were unsuccessful.
The plot was discovered when staff returned to work after the weekend and realised their computers had been tampered with.
Another man allegedly involved in orchestrating the heist, Bernard Davies, died before the trial began.
Rodley and Nash will be sentenced tomorrow.
The failure of the Sumitomo Mitsui Bank heist demonstrates the absolute need for robust IT security policies and controls. The potential damage to the Bank if the fraud had succeeded - whether from an operational, financial, reputational or strategic angle - are hard to contemplate. All major financial institutions need to ensure that they are devoting sufficient attention to information risk management - because this is the golden thread that binds together all forms of risk. Information risk management is thus vital to ensuring that audacious plots such as these continue to be thwarted in the future. And that business value is created rather than destroyed.
Posted by: Tim Kipps 05 Mar 2009
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