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The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet

#3

Post by dmvinson »

The article doesn't really go into the thieves' backgrounds at all strangely enough. How did Katana end up in the bank heist business? How did he acquire the skills to turn making fake bank transactions into an "art"? I always wonder about the kind of person who ends up in these criminal dealings and where they come from.

Re: The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet

#4

Post by eumoria »

adreamingsoul wrote: post #2

Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that one of these guys would drop a debit card at a heist?

Especially in the sentence prior to it where it says "the ATM started disgorging cash without either man touching it"

What's the bank card for if they just stood there and it spit money out in a timed fashion?

Re: The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet

#6

Post by adreamingsoul »

eumoria wrote: post #4
adreamingsoul wrote: post #2

Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that one of these guys would drop a debit card at a heist?

Especially in the sentence prior to it where it says "the ATM started disgorging cash without either man touching it" What's the bank card for if they just stood there and it spit money out in a timed fashion?

Yeah, maybe the author of that article was having a bit of leeway with the story or the facts being presented to us are questionable. Either way, it doesn't give me a lot of trust or confidence in the truth of that article.

Re: The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet

#7

Post by 21 »

adreamingsoul wrote: post #2

Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that one of these guys would drop a debit card at a heist?

People are always shocked at the stupid mistakes that big criminal masterminds make.

Like the Silk Road guy, "how could he possibly ask on stack overflow using his real name".

And so on.

There are ten thousands different mistakes that you can make, you need to guard against all of them. And against whatever unknown tech exists.

In this story, that dropped bank card turns out to not be that significant. The real breakthrough was identifying another mule through the video surveillance videos, following him to the airport and putting surveillance on the lockers used to store the cash.

He was also emptying ATMs apparently with witnesses behind him. This is like a bad movie. One of those witnesses might as well be an off-duty cop who could just pull out his gun right there.

Re: The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet

#8

Post by neilk »

I've learned to be skeptical when I see law enforcement praising the l337 skillz of their targets.

    > “This guy is in another league, he’s like Rafa Nadal
    > playing tennis,” Yuste says. “There are few people in
    > the world capable of doing what he did.”
It sounds really cool (and budget-justifying) to be chasing some mastermind, and a journalist is likely to pump up that aspect of the story too. Because they know we're reading it to be entertained, for there to be suspense, to enjoy the frisson of a "victimless" crime requiring ingenuity, like Ocean's 11.

Then you find out later it's just a python script probing for default passwords, or someone who learned some of nmap's command-line switches.

Re: The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet

#10

Post by _bxg1 »

adreamingsoul wrote: post #2

Am I the only one that finds it suspicious that one of these guys would drop a debit card at a heist?

It sounded like it was one of the "mules" who dropped the card. Probably just some random guys hired cheaply so those in charge didn't have to go out in person; they probably weren't necessarily smart or careful.
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