Three charged in money laundering scheme stealing $30M from foreign banks | Hacker News Reader

Three charged in money laundering scheme stealing $30M from foreign banks

justice.gov

38 pointselliekelly14 comments

> The co-conspirators entered the safe deposit box rooms of the targeted banks and used sophisticated camera equipment, including borescopes that are typically used in medical procedures, to photograph the insides of locks of safe deposit boxes belonging to other individuals.

Wow! SOP everywhere I've been is to be supervised when you're opening the box, which has a cover on it. When you remove your box, then you can go alone to a room with your contents. You're never left alone in the vault where all the boxes are.

Which is why they primarily targeted small, Eastern European banks who lacked cameras and also appeared to lack procedures too.

I recall reading about how their is little to none insurance for items stored in safety deposit boxes. I imagine in this case the $30m gone would not be returned?

Yes absolutely. It's part of the docs you sign so the bank has no liability.

*safe deposit boxes. just like daylight saving time.

And yes, prudence dictates that insurance is required over safe deposit box contents if they are valuable; in the US at least the banks are almost universally not liable for securing the contents. (TFA is about banks in Europe.)

Are you even allowed to put cash in safe deposit boxes in the USA? In Canada, that is against the terms for most banks and they will not reimburse you for cash in them if stolen.

My understanding is that you are not allowed to store cash in them in US either.

It's not illegal to store cash in a safe deposit box, but some banks have policies which will state that you cannot. Ostensibly over money laundering / illegal asset hiding concerns.

But regardless of policy, it really does not make a whole lot of sense to keep your cash in there. If you just deposit the cash at the counter it's insured through FDIC, in the box it's not.

Right, I didn't indicate its illegal, I said it is not allowed.

My understanding of safe deposit boxes is that the contents are not guaranteed by the bank at all and if something causes the contents to be lost or destroyed, the best they will do is refund some of the safe deposit box fees.

It sounds like they got caught because of a lack of monetary / identity concealment / security hygiene.

Did they recover any proceeds? If so, what will they do with it?

Not going to lie, that’s a pretty impressive scam.

All they did was copy that bank robber movie I can't remember the name of and then boroscoped some locks. LPL wouldn't even need that: click on 2, 3 is binding ...

It can hardly be called "sophisticated" or "impressive." And, it's not a scam since they didn't trick anyone into giving them anything of value, they lied to gain access to commit theft.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com