Security News > 2021 > December > Plundered bitcoins recovered by FBI – all 3,879-and-one-sixth of them!
The victim in this case was the Sony Life Insurance Company Limited, which was allegedly defrauded of this enormous sum in an audacious internal scam that was apparently pulled off by a single employee.
The US Department of Justice claims that a certain Mr Rei Ishii conducted a classic "Send funds to a different account" scam.
That's the same sort of thing that external cybercriminals try to pull off by hacking into one or more company email accounts in an attack known as Business Email Compromise.
Crooks apparently managed to kick off bogus transactions totalling over $1 billion, and to get away with just over $100 million, although $850 million was never transferred, supposedly due to a spelling mistake made by the fraudsters during the pricess.
As you can imagine, if that's what outsiders can do with access to company email flows, just think what a determined insider might be able to pull off, given enough time to prepare, combined with a sufficiently reckless approach.
Ishii, who has already been arrested and charged in Japan, was investigated by a group including at least the FBI, Sony, Citibank, Japan's National Police Agency, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, and the Japan Prosecutors' Unit on Emerging Crimes.