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An international gang of computer hackers and fraudsters tried to steal £229m from a bank in the City of London by corrupting its IT system and electronically transferring money around the world, a court was told yesterday.
Their alleged attempt to rob the accounts of some of the world's largest companies was foiled when they bungled attempts to send money to fake accounts after sneaking into the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation's London headquarters on two occasions.
Two men and a woman appeared in the dock at Snaresbrook crown court in east London accused of being part of the scheme to corrupt the Japanese bank's computer systems and electronically transfer money by the Swift banking system to accounts in Spain, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Three other men have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal.
Kevin O'Donohue, 33, from Birmingham, a security supervisor in the bank, and Belgians Gilles Poelvoorde, 34, and Jan Van Osselaer, 32, will be sentenced at the end of the trial, which is expected to last at least six weeks. The jury was told that attempts by O'Donohue to tamper with the bank's CCTV system did not go to plan as "snippets" of the trio entering the premises together had been found, along with DNA evidence on a cable O'Donohue had tried to sever.
Hugh Rodley, 61, who goes by the bought title of Lord Rodley, of Tudor Manor, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, David Nash, 47, of Durrington, West Sussex, and Swedish national Inger Malmros, 58, deny they were part of the conspiracy to defraud and transfer criminal property between 1 January and 5 October 2004.
Another man, Bernard Davies, 74, had been due to stand trial with the others but he died last weekend.
Simon Farrell, QC, described the attempt as "dishonest, bold and sophisticated".
The hackers installed software in the bank that took snapshot images every two seconds of the keystrokes used during business hours and stored names and passwords, the court heard. Farrell said the the information was copied and uploaded over several evenings after O'Donohue smuggled the men in.
The jury was told that Poeldoorde and Van Osselaer were taken back on a later date and the stolen passwords and codes were used to compile 10 Swift money transfer system messages. But the messages failed to go through because the two hackers made a key logging error.
The three men allegedly left the bank at 4.30am but returned the following afternoon and made 11 further attempts at Swift transfers but these could not be completed either. They tried to steal money from accounts belonging to some of the world's biggest companies including Toshiba International, Nomura Asset Management and Mitsui OSK Lines.
Farrell said: "Mistakes were made. Fairly frantic attempts were made to collect the money."
The three accused "must have known what was going on", said Farrell, who claimed Rodley was in control and put up the others to front the accounts.
Inside the bank, O'Donohue had tried to cover the gang's tracks, said Farrell, but "he failed to do a perfect job".
The case continues.
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