UK Hacker Gets 9 Years for Bank Fraud

A Southwark Crown Court has found Jagmeet Channa guilty of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering, and gave him a total of 16 years incarceration time, 90 months for the defraud and 9 years for money laundering, but the sentences will be served concurrently. It seems that he somehow got hold of his coworkers' security credentials and then used that info to transfer a total of £71,632,807 to two accounts, one in Morocco and one to the Manchester branch of Barclays. His actions were discovered in time, the money has been recovered, and the guilty party has been brought to justice.

Det Sgt Martin Peters had this to say after the judge issued the sentence: "This crime is believed to be one of the largest frauds of its kind and it is thanks to the prompt response of the police and the banks that the money was recovered."

The court was presided by Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, and according to him Jagmeet Channa is not the only one to blame. He obviously had accomplices, but it is yet to be determined who they are. Initially the police suspected two employees from the same bank, but after further investigation it turned out they had no idea Jagmeet had stolen their security credentials. The two were consequently declared innocent.

It seems that his own carelessness gave him away. After using stolen passwords to approve the transfers, a £47,970,227 one to Morocco and a £23,984,113 to Manchester, Jagmeet forgot to delete the account balance. If he had left a zero balance, then the HSBC bank employees in Malaysia would not have noticed the quite large debit and he might have gotten away with it.

Jagmeet Channa is only 25 years old, of Indian origin, and has worked for HSBC for just one year. He used to reside on Church Road, Ilford, in the Eastern part of London.