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RE: Is more money stolen through cryptocurrency hacking or bank robberies?

in #dpoll6 years ago

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  • Bank robberies

In one heist just a couple of years ago, over $100 million was stolen and another $1 billion was only foiled because of bad spelling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery

Just one example. If you're only comparing physical (guns and money bags) bank robberies it's a separate question, but if you include cyber-crime, then bank robberies outpace crypto-hacking by orders of magnitude.

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I watched a video on that one and it was pretty cool. But wow, they managed to steal so much without going in with a gun like you see in the movies. Tech is taking over.

Bangladesh Bank robbery
The Bangladesh Bank robbery, also known colloquially as the Bangladesh Bank cyber heist, took place in February 2016, when thirty-five fraudulent instructions were issued by security hackers via the SWIFT network to illegally transfer close to US $1 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York account belonging to Bangladesh Bank. The central bank of Bangladesh is commonly called "Bangladesh Bank" locally. Five of the thirty-five fraudulent instructions were successful in transferring $101 million, with $20 million traced to Sri Lanka and $81 million to the Philippines. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York blocked the remaining thirty transactions, amounting to $850 million, due to suspicions raised by a misspelled instruction.

A robbery is taking anything of value by force, threat of force, or by putting the victim in fear. Except where hacking is used to extort the value from the bank (say for example by threatening to release sensitive information, or embarrass a bank executive) it's not a bank robbery. The Bangledeshi example is one of larceny and fraud, not robbery.