🚨 Breaking News: Reports of simultaneous hacking of banks and theft from accounts in 15 countries.
The novel coronavirus was like this in its first week too. Sporadic headlines. Small numbers. No one called it a crisis.
1/ Japan: Fake phone calls posing as banks scammed a Yamagata company out of over 912 million yen (about $6.1 million). In October, it turned into a joint case with Vietnam. Seven arrests locally.
2/ Taiwan: In one day, 41.76 million Taiwanese dollars (about $1.3 million) were withdrawn from 418 customers of Yongfeng Bank. Even from customers who hadn't logged in. All refunded.
3/ Vietnam: Hackers had been lurking in the bank's systems for months. Then, in one night, they stole the bank's own funds.
4/ South Korea: In about one month, 37 financial companies were breached. About 473,000 records leaked. About 580 companies investigated.
5/ Nepal: The central bank ordered all banks to take their websites offline. 22 customers lost 4.987 million Nepalese rupees to fake KYC calls.
6/ Indonesia: 6,609 accounts at Bank Jambi were hit. 144.82 billion rupiah (about $8.8 million) leaked out.
7/ Singapore: $12.8 million was transferred to Cambodia via fake signed letters. Full amount recovered.
8/ Malaysia: 1.985 million ringgit was siphoned from royal family accounts at two banks (civil lawsuit).
9/ Sri Lanka: The Ministry of Finance lost $2.5 million to email scams. Still not recovered.
10/ New Zealand: Fake cops hijacked 22 bank accounts. $198,000 NZD vanished.
11/ Canada: A former employee of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) was convicted for opening 43 fake accounts for organized crime.
12/ Mexico: A crime group used AI tools against the SPEI payment system.
13/ Brazil: Central bank saw a record 99 cyber incidents over 9 months, 68 of them fraud.
14/ USA: 14 indicted in Dallas: SIM swaps and compromised insiders targeted accounts holding over $373 million. A Florida company lost $6.5 million in 15 wire transfers over 3 days, with over $4 million still missing.
15/ France: Crédit Mutuel Arkea lost about $133 million through business partners. The largest loss among the 15 cases.
So, let's widen the lens.
Thieves infiltrate via apps, business partners, fake calls, and compromised staff. Brazil already exceeded its 2025 annual count in 9 months. This is just the beginning.
The novel coronavirus locked down cities. No government has ordered banks locked down. Thieves never needed that in the first place. No one's calling this a crisis yet. But Japan's police are already preparing for the day victims pay scammers twice over.
Starting next week, Japan's National Police Agency will share fraud account data with 807 financial institutions. Japan's online and phone fraud losses hit 261 billion yen (about $1.7 billion) from January to September, on pace to surpass 2025's all-time high.
News sites report these thefts one country at a time, never covering all 15 together. Send this to everyone with a bank deposit.