14 DAY TRIAL // In February 2013, cybercriminals managed to steal close to $40 million (€30 million) from accounts of Oman’s Bank Muscat. Now, the financial institution has announced that it will recover the money from insurers.
In a statement published on Sunday, the bank noted that, over the past few months, it had worked with insurers to recover the loss.
“Bank Muscat announced today that its insurers have agreed to indemnify the bank’s loss in the sum of OR 15 Millions (USD 38.8 Millions) in relation to the pre-paid card fraud incident, initially disclosed on MSM on February 25, 2013. The bank will reverse the loss provision created in Q1 2013 towards this specific loss through its Q4 2013 results,” Bank Muscat noted.
Several members of the cybercriminal organization responsible for the heist have been arrested and charged in November. The crooks hacked into the systems of payment card processors and removed ATM withdrawal limits. They’ve also disabled the security protocols set in place to alert victims of fraud attempts.
They stole payment card information, which they used to make 36,000 fraudulent ATM transactions at machines located in 24 countries. They managed to obtain the large amount of money over the course of 10 hours.
In addition to Bank Muscat, the fraudsters targeted National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK) prepaid card accounts at a payment card processor. The attack, which took place in December 2012, resulted in losses of approximately $5 million (€3.7 million).
Of the total of $45 million (€33.5 million) stolen, the New York branch of the criminal ring is said to have made $2.8 million (€2 million) through a well-organized network of accomplices.