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October 9, 2017

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2 held in Sri Lanka for Taiwan bank fraud

SRI Lankan police have arrested two men for helping international criminals who hacked into computers at a Taiwan bank and allegedly stole millions of dollars, an official said yesterday.

The pair were arrested after they tried to withdraw large sums of money that had been wired to their accounts with a Sri Lankan bank branch in the capital Colombo, the official said.

The police Criminal Investigation Department was working closely with Taiwan counterparts to track down the hackers, who are said to have breached the Taiwan bank’s computers last week.

“We are looking at some US$1.3 million that had come into three accounts in Sri Lanka,” the official involved with the investigation said. “We have taken two people into custody, and we are looking for one more person.”

Police in Sri Lanka did not disclose the name of the affected bank in Taiwan or the sum said to have been stolen, but a Sri Lankan media report said tens of millions of dollars had been wired out of the island.

In Taipei the Financial Regulatory Commission confirmed that the local Far Eastern International Bank’s SWIFT system had been hacked through a computer virus but gave no details.

Taiwan’s media quoted the bank as saying that it detected irregularities in its SWIFT system and there were suspicious transactions starting on Thursday to Sri Lanka, Cambodia as well as to the United States.

However, Taiwan police have recovered most of the money, the reports said.

Sri Lankan police investigated a similar theft in February last year when hackers broke into the computer system of the Bangladesh central bank and transferred US$20 million of stolen money to a Sri Lankan businesswoman.

The money was recovered, and an court investigation is pending.




 

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