Links in “Financial Crime”

Gameover Zeus, a botnet, infected up to 1 million computers, putting them in the control of hackers in Russia and Ukraine. The network stole bank credentials and used them to make wire transfers overseas. It is estimated the network stole more than $100 million. [6/3]

A woman who robbed a branch of Alaska FCU made the mistake of showing up the next day to rob the same branch. Alert employees spotted the woman standing in the teller line and contacted the authorities who arrested her as she fled the parking lot. [6/3]

Former assistant manager and Treasurer, William Memmer, of the failed $15.5 million G.I.C. FCU was sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $7 million in restitution for embezzlement and fraud. Over a course of years, Memmer used blank credit union checks to pay off over $2 million in personal credit card debt he accumulated on 15 different credit card accounts. [5/30]

The justice system works a little differently in Iran, where a billionaire businessman was executed Saturday in Iran for his role in a $2.6 billion bank scam. [5/27]

The Department of Justice names several high-ranking Chinese officials as behind several cyber espionage attacks, a "watershed" moment to put faces to what has been a faceless crime. [5/23]

A series of lawsuits against ten banks and one credit union claim that the financial institutions should have known that their online payday lending accountholders were breaking the law. Specifically, the suits filed in federal courts claim that by processing transactions for these companies the financial institutions helping them to exceed usury ceilings and break other laws. [5/22]

The FBI is investigating whether an employee at the former Parsons-Pittsburg Credit Union embezzled $10 million to support a gambling habit.  NCUA took over the $13.5M credit union in January at which time the employee admitted to gambling wins and losses totaling $16M in the previous year. Now $10M in nonmember deposits have been discovered missing. [5/21]

"Federal Emergency Scam Artists" are posing as inspectors, government officials or contractors in order to obtain personal information or collect payment for disaster assistance or repairs. FEMA issues guidelines to help consumers differentiate between the two. [5/19]

Another individual, Svetislav Vujovic, has been convicted of 10 counts of making false statements to a federal credit union, two counts of money laundering and one count each of fraud and bribery. Mr Vujovic obtained dozens of personal and business loans totaling more than $30 million over a four-year period. [5/16]

NCUA has announced that examiners will be assessing credit union’s ability to mitigate cybersecurity threats and to effectively respond to attacks. The Agency states that as credit unions have increased their use of online and mobile banking they have increased their risk for begin targets of cybercrimes. [5/13]