Coursework Example on Computer Crimes in Banks

The suspect together with other accomplices namely, Willis Munsee a Nigerian citizen living in the United states and Yan Yi an American- south Korean citizen, defrauded Barclays bank a total of 5 million dollars between December 2016 and July 2017. John as the employee of Barclays bank is accused of infecting the bank's computer network system with a worm to infiltrate and skimmed from the bank's customer within that period before the bank's manager raised the alarm. With the help of his two accomplices, they are said to operate ten different bank accounts where money was deposited in small amounts not to raise suspicion from the financial crime unit.

John was raised in a relatively well up family (both blood bankers); went to good schools and had no previous criminal record. He can be profiled with the routine activity theory owing to his previously clean record where the crime is typical, and John found an opportunity for crime. It is believed that both John and yang sometimes met in mid-2016. Yang is a known serial computer criminal convicted of cybercrime in July 2013 but cleared and has two other pending court cases. Using the psychological theory of moral development Yang is a famous cyber thief who steals for his financial gains to fund his lavish lifestyles with a history of alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, and gambling. His former schoolmates described his father as abusive, and this attribute could make him fit in this profile. However, both hackers have no known previous links to other criminal organization.

It is believed that after both yang and John met and gradually became friends, John was not aware of yang's initial intentions (based on the accused confession). Later in early December yang revealed his plan and John was enticed with financial gains that were to follow. Using an invisible key logger stealth, uploaded on his workplace computer, John was able to access the bank's chief accounting manager passwords and other logging details. He immediately availed those classified details to yang who used them to infiltrate using the Zeus program worm to bypass Avaloq banking system together with Finacle system used to store data for high-profile customers to intercept money deposited through the Barclays bank branch. Zeus program deducts small unnoticeable amounts from the customer's account. Eventually, the program transferred funds to their accounts which are registered under the name of the third criminal (Willis Munsee). This went unnoticed for four months until detectives from the cybercrime unit who had been tracing yang broke into his hideout and confiscated hard drives and computer devices on 12 March this year. Yang was not present at the time of the raid and is believed to have escaped to Korea. Data retrieved from yangs laptop evolved contained information of what Yangs was working on since it contained customer information, bank balances and transfers that evolved to this investigation. Immediately the bank was notified and-and investigation was launched broad enough to cover employees for possible insider sabotage. Emails from yang's laptop led to the arrest of the suspect, and other similar hacking software and hardware was confiscated which proved John involvement.

References

Moore, M. (2017). Psychological Theories of Crime and Delinquency. Retrieved 4 October 2017, from https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2015/SPP209/um/2_Moore_2011_PsychologicalTheories_of_Crime.pdf

Lowman, s. (2017). Criminology of computer crime. Retrieved 4 October 2017, from https://www.lowmanio.co.uk/share/TheCriminologyofComputerCrime.pdf

Key loggers Explained: What You Need to Know. (2017). Howtogeek.com. Retrieved 4 October 2017, from https://www.howtogeek.com/180615/keyloggers-explained-what-you-need-to-know/

Bank account hacking software gets smarter. (2017). Mybroadband.co.za. Retrieved 4 October 2017, from https://mybroadband.co.za/news/security/52855-bank-account-hacking-software-gets-smarter.html