IT Manager Steals €600 Thousand from the Bank He Works for – and Goes to Prison for 7 Years

I often wonder how people commit various crimes related to their job activities and hope no one will notice anything and they will be able to continue doing such things forever – remaining on the job as well. Today there’s an interesting story about an IT manager who managed to steal more than €600k from a Russian bank he worked for relying on quite simple manipulations with the cards issued by this bank.

The person was in charge of development of the bank’s processing operations working in the IT department of one of the well-known Russian banks. After working in the bank for a few months he quickly invented a scam that he could use to steal money from the bank and stay unnoticed. The pattern was quite simple: he persuaded some of his friends to open accounts with this bank and give the debit cards for him to use (I honestly have no idea how he managed to handle this particular part as it is hard to imagine a person opening a bank account and giving the card to someone else to use as this person will choose) and withdrew various amounts from the cards.

But his access to the processing operations allowed him to change the information of such fraudulent transactions so that withdrawing of €1 thousand looked like withdrawing of some €30 only from the account. As a result he easily turned small cash he deposited to the accounts into huge cash he withdrew later.

He has managed to process a total of 184 transactions in this manner which brought a total of €600 thousand loss to the bank. Here I have to mention that this is a huge amount in Russia and I don’t know how he expected to spend the money without his colleagues realizing that his salary and his expenses vary a lot.

Yesterday the guy was pleaded guilty by the court and he will now spend a total of 7 years in prison and will also have to repay the entire stolen amount to the bank. Lesson to all developers and coders: the fact that you know how to hack a processing system of a bank and quickly become richer by thousands (maybe millions) of dollars does not mean that you will be able to do it and use the money to turn your life into a life of your dreams with the money you steal.

Via (in Russian). Image credit.