Ed: 00:00

Okay, Kara. I got a question for you.

Kara: 00:03

Okay.

Ed: 00:04

Uh can I get ten bucks from you?

Kara: 00:07

Uh sure.

Ed: 00:08

Okay. Well that's easy. Now what about a hundred dollars?

Kara: 00:12

Uh I'd have to check.

Ed: 00:18

Right? Yeah, yeah. I I I would be kind of like the same way. Like, oh yeah, sure if I got it, go for it. Um, but the chances of me having it. It's it's like uh when you ask a billionaire how much they're worth versus how much they actually have in their pocket. It's a completely different thing. Well, with that being said, what about a thousand dollars?

Kara: 00:38

I'd have to check.

Ed: 00:42

Right, yeah. Catch me outside the pawn shop and then maybe okay. Now this one's probably out of the question. What about uh what about a hundred thousand dollars?

Kara: 00:52

Can I have a hundred thousand dollars?

Ed: 00:54

Well, I'm the one who's asking you for it.

Kara: 00:56

Well, I'm asking you at this point because I don't got it.

Ed: 00:59

Yeah, I'll have to knock over some liquor stores, but yeah, I could probably make it work eventually. Cool. And then I'm I'm an and I'm assuming too at a million dollars it's probably out of the question. Out of the question, yeah. And then like, how creative would I have to get to try to get a billion dollars? I don't know. You notice how like each increment of money as it goes up and up and up, you kind of you have to be a little more elaborate with the questions, you have to be a little more delicate in terms of how you approach it. You have to be um, you really have to think a bit more. Like you don't have to think as hard when you're dealing with ten dollars, but then when you start asking somebody for a thousand dollars, now that's like a conversation that has to be had. Considering I just got off the Great Depression trade and yeah, so yeah, that's that's what we're gonna look at today is like what does it take? What kind of creativity do you have to have to not just ask somebody for some money, but to like straight up steal it? And not just uh like ten dollars or a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, but we're talking almost a billion dollars. And I'm gonna teach you all the tick tricks of the trade to make it happen, and at the end of this, we'll see if you're prepared to steal a billion dollars. Great. So let's get into it. Hey everybody, it's your day's dumpster fire, and I hope you're not feeling too broke. But if you are, hopefully by the end of this, you you too can be a billionaire. If not, you're gonna be a 10 $10 nair. So I'm your host, Ed, with me every time on these late, late night uh Saturday recording marathons is Kara. Kara, how does it feel to be no longer talking about the Great Depression?

Kara: 02:57

I'm still hopped up on coffee and I kind of miss the 30s, but that's okay.

Ed: 03:04

Oh, yeah, the roaring 30s of it all. The the the soup kitchens, the unemployment, the uncertainty of where your uh next paycheck is coming from. Good times. Fireside chats that really help you get through it. And I and I agree with you, like when you brought that up, I think it was on the this part two of The Great Depression. You brought up like uh Roosevelt's uh fireside chats.

Kara: 03:30

Yeah.

Ed: 03:30

Like they still it's amazing how they still apply today.

Kara: 03:34

Man, those things hold up so well, yeah. So well, go listen to them, they're great.

Ed: 03:39

Yeah, and also I'm a big fan of Winston Churchill's versions.

Kara: 03:43

Oh, yeah, he does a good job.

Ed: 03:45

But but him, it's more like we will never surrender, we will you know, we'll we'll fight in the streets, we'll fight in the hills, we'll fight in the sky, we'll fight on the beaches.

Kara: 03:57

Well, he was in the midst of the Blitzkrieg and uh two and all of that.

Ed: 04:03

Yes, that that is where a good portion of London was living in the subways and yeah, yeah, very different landscape. But yeah, it it today we are going on a completely different path than where we've been.

Kara: 04:21

Whiplash.

Ed: 04:21

Uh right. Uh, for everybody who's like still like processing the Great Depression, like, whoa, hey, we're in 2015. I think this is probably one of the most recent time periods that I think it is the most recent one we've done. Because the last most recent one was the uh Deep Water Horizon.

Kara: 04:42

That was 2010, yeah.

Ed: 04:44

Yeah, yeah, this is 2015, 2016. So so yeah, we are uh we're kind of veering away from Prohibition, the 1920s, we're kind of moving away from the Great Depression a little bit. Uh we are actually going to be looking at what is considered the largest bank heist ever. So, like, you know, you go back in the day and you know, you think of a bank heist, right? You think of people wearing cowboy outfits, right? They come in with their six shooters, they go up to the guy behind the counter, point a gun at him, you know, a gun at him, and say, give me all your money, and they grab like a bag full of cash and then they split. Today, like a lot of people still think that's how bank heists work, and it's kind of true. Like, you can go in and knock over a bank, but you're only gonna get a small amount of cash. Like, I think you're only gonna get maybe a couple thousand dollars, and when you empty and you tell the teller to like empty out everything, and you're not gonna be able to get into like the safety deposit boxes and all that kind of stuff. So let's get into part one here, which is electronic banking. Electronic banking has changed pretty much everything that we know about little banking. Um, like when was the last time you ever had to go inside of a bank for anything?

Kara: 06:10

Uh a few weeks ago.

Ed: 06:12

Really?

Kara: 06:13

But we had it we had a can't live an account that we had. That's the only reason.

unknown: 06:17

Yeah.

Kara: 06:18

Otherwise, not really. Um, last time we had to do anything purposeful aside from opening or closing an account. Ooh, it's been a hot minute. It's been like a couple years because uh I had some fraud happening. We had to get that straightened out.

Ed: 06:33

Oh, I had no idea.

Kara: 06:34

New card. Yeah, it was a few years ago. Oh wow. Not identity fraud.

Ed: 06:38

It was just that sounds like a little dumpster fire in its own right.

Kara: 06:40

Yeah, no, it was just like somebody used my card in like Delaware or something stupid.

Ed: 06:48

See, see, you gotta you gotta follow the path that I follow for internet like identity theft, where you want to be so broke that when somebody steals your identity, they actually give your identity back with like a twin dollars and an apology note.

Kara: 07:04

Yeah, that is the way.

Ed: 07:07

Well, it is a way, uh yeah. So, but yeah, like electronic banking has really changed everything. Like 99.9% of everything that I do with banking is on my phone. And in all reality, it's just like I there's no reason to go into a bank. I I remember when my I first got a job, I would have to go in and deposit my my my paychecks of like $110. Like, I would have to go, you know, sign the back of it, hand it to a teller, give them my ID and my my bank card, and like nowadays, none of that. So the only other thing that we think about a bank is having that giant vault. And there are some banks that still have the giant vault, uh, but those are kind of like forced obsolete, I'd say now. Well, what what they have inside are is is the uh the bank or the safety deposit boxes. So that's where you would want to keep like the deed to your house, or you have a uh I think my grandfather had my grandmother's wedding ring in there, and when she got too old and her hands got too arthritic, she couldn't wear the ring anymore. But it's a solid platinum with a three-quarter carat diamond that dates back to like the 1860s. He's like, I'm not keeping that in the house, I'm gonna keep it in a safety deposit box. Um, so yeah, it's funny because the safety deposit boxes, like you can put anything in those.

Kara: 08:32

Yeah.

Ed: 08:32

Like there's a dude that kept like super expensive rare handguns inside of it. Like, as long as it doesn't explode, you're okay. So electronic banking as a result has kind of really changed a lot of things, and that also changed how we go about robbing banks. So I think, like, you know, I listened to some true crime podcasts. There's a lot of uh podcasts out there that will like people are still knocking over banks today, like in the 80s, 90s, and even the 2000s. But these guys are usually kind of dumb. And they yeah, they like like they may rob a bank nowadays, but like the most they'll walk out with is like maybe 10,000, 20,000 in cash. And good luck on the whole safety deposit box, like, because a lot of them are timed, the vault doors are timed, you can't just blow a hole in it and walk in. And in all honesty, like most banks don't even carry that much cash. Like, I remember one time my grandfather, when I was a little kid, my grandfather paid cash for a car, and like he took out like thirty thousand dollars in cash and went to the dealership and bought a car just straight up cash. And nowadays, I don't think a bank will even give you thirty thousand dollars in cash if you even if you have it.

Kara: 09:56

I've never had the uh you've never had that problem. No, never had that issue.

Ed: 10:03

Yeah, like I yeah, I I I yeah, it's weird. Like, I I don't know if they could even do it. Maybe they give you like a like a cash card or something like that. I mean it may be a weird question to ask, but I may ask it one of these days, just going to bank like, hey, do you guys have thirty thousand dollars in cash I can pull out if I had it? Uh and then security would probably be called on me. Possibly, yeah. So, and the reason why they don't carry a lot of cash is because like we have these debit cards, right, that use like NFCs or um, they do wire transfers, and most electronic banking has absolutely nothing to do with paper anymore. Well, and go back to the Great Depression, right? What did Roosevelt do? He's like, let's stop basing our economy just purely off of gold, and that has still stuck around to this day. Like, we have more cash floating around in the world than we do bars of gold. That's just how it is, even though I think America still has like 20 trillion dollars in gold just sitting around. Like, I'm not sure what they do with it, but I hear it's out there. I don't know, right for the taking if you can get through Fort Knox.

Kara: 11:15

I'm not broadcasting my willingness or unwillingness to go rob the US government.

Ed: 11:22

Yeah, the the Treasury.

Kara: 11:23

Yeah.

Ed: 11:26

So yeah, uh it it is true that 83% of Americans still use cash, but I think a lot of it is just like people carry a couple 20s in a wallet just in case they need cash. Uh, I think one study shows that yeah, most Americans care about 60 on average $67 from 2024 to 2025. So I think a lot of people just keep pieces of paper in their wallet to either one show off or two just in case if there's someplace and they actually need to probably buy a tank of gas from a gas station in the middle of nowhere, run by some dude with no teeth that probably kills people um on the side and uh they only take cash.

Kara: 12:09

Right.

Ed: 12:09

Not sure if you've seen I'm not sure if you've seen House of a Thousand Corpses by Rob Zombie.

Kara: 12:14

It's been a very long time. I was actually thinking of Hills Have Eyes, but um Oh yeah, that too. Same same drift.

Ed: 12:20

Yep.

Kara: 12:20

Yeah.

Ed: 12:22

So truth be told, there really isn't much need for cash when everything can be tabulated, tracked. Um, wow, I have I have tabulated, tracked, and tabulated. That's that's some fine note-taking right there. There you go. Um when everyone's finances are digital instead of relying on how much pieces of paper can be stored in one location. Uh yeah, back in the day, I think even during the Great Depression, you got paid, you probably got paid in cash, and then you deposited that cash in the bank, and then that bank would be sitting on a large sum of cash, probably a crap ton. So, well, we could go on about the efficacy of gold, silver, cash economics. We've already done that. Of the gold standard, the silver standard, and and all that. So go check out the yeah, that was like the first Great Depression.

Kara: 13:12

Yeah, we argued about it for a little bit and and people loved it.

Ed: 13:16

Was that yeah, like wasn't that weird? Like you had people tell you. I had people tell me, like, oh yeah, we thought that was fascinating. Like, really, I thought that was what they were like, yeah, I had to go look it up because I didn't know who was right. Yeah, it's just like, yeah, I I I had family members telling me the same thing, like, yeah, we thought that was really intriguing. And like, really? When I learned about it in school, it dang you put me to sleep.

Kara: 13:42

It was Yeah, my my siblings were were like, it's so great that I can just text you and ask you or tell you.

Ed: 13:51

Yes, we are the experts at really kind of useless information.

Kara: 13:57

That's fix.

Ed: 13:60

So not having everything tied up in paper cash has its its pros and cons. So our first pro here is that if you have a family member who needs a thousand dollars for whatever reason, you can just wire them the money, right? You can you can go to a bank, and as long as you know whatever bank they have is like a legit bank, you can just wire over the money to that bank. It's instantaneous. And that beats stuffing, like if you need to send somebody, you know, say $20,000, that beats stuffing an envelope full of cash, because that there was a time when that's how it was done. And I'm sorry, but if you have a like a manila envelope filled with cash, you can tell that is an envelope full of cash.

Kara: 14:43

Yeah.

Ed: 14:44

And it it and it will disappear. Yeah. So another pro is um, you know, having your funds locked away digitally makes it harder for someone to walk away uh with it like stuffed in their pockets. Uh going back to mailing cash physically uh once once in transit, and as soon as someone from the post office sees what's in it, then you can kiss your thousand dollars goodbye. You don't have that problem with digital money. Uh, you don't have to keep counting on or can't keep counting or keep ridiculous records that make sure you have all your money when dealing with things digitally, like everything can be calculated automatically. I remember as a kid, my grandfather he would balance his checkbook every Saturday and he kept every receipt that he, whenever he bought anything from a tank of gas to lunch me at the grocery store, like he kept receipts of everything, and then at every Saturday he would add up all the receipts, and then he would verify on his checkbook that all the withdrawals were on there. And I remember he would be off by like 10 cents and he would spend the next four hours trying to figure out what happened to that 10 cents. Nice, and I was always glad when he was over because then he would give me the change. It's like I gotta balance everything. Here's 10 cents. I don't know where it came from, but don't tell the cops. Sure, grandpa. I I I won't tell the cops where you got this mysterious dime from.

Kara: 16:17

I'll go add it to the jar and maybe I'll be able to buy a pack of gum.

Ed: 16:22

Yeah, yeah. Like I'll I'll get like a dollar here in like 10 more weeks. So um the other thing, and I think this is probably the biggest one, is that like you get to pay bills online.

Kara: 16:33

Yeah.

Ed: 16:34

Were you were you ever around where you had to pay bills, like paper bills or write out the check and all that?

Kara: 16:39

No, but I watched my parents do it.

Ed: 16:41

Oh, it's so boring. Yeah. Like you have to put in so much work to throw away your money.

Kara: 16:47

Yeah, and you have to like put it in the envelope they give you, and then go and drop it off somewhere.

Ed: 16:52

And oh, my personal favorite is you have to go buy a book of stamps.

Kara: 16:56

Oh, yeah.

Ed: 16:56

So you have to pay money to give somebody else your money.

Kara: 17:01

Correct.

Ed: 17:02

Oh, good. So depressing.

Kara: 17:04

Yeah.

Ed: 17:05

But there's some downsides too. So, like, while digital banking is much more secure in a lot of respects, to a select group of ambitious folks, those security measures can be compromised and easily. Like, identity theft is a big freaking deal by today's standards. Uh, once somebody has access to your digital wallet, money can be transferred out at terrifyingly fast speeds. Uh, you might be able to rob a bank in 10 minutes and walk away with a few thousand dollars. A well-thought-out cyber attack can lay out the bank for days, if not weeks, and quite often in the first few minutes of the heist, hundreds of thousands of dollars can be transferred, as we will see today. Uh, we are looking at millions of dollars, like tens of millions of dollars being transferred out and siphoned out of a bank in minutes, and then from there it's a it's it makes it a little harder to track because that was always the big thing. Is like, okay, cool, yeah. Somebody robs a bank digitally. Well, we have a digital fingerprint for everything and we can track it down. In most cases, yes. If you got a hacker who is an idiot, uh, yeah, you can easily track it down. But if you get some people who know what they're doing, yeah, you could be uh you could kiss all that money goodbye. Oh, yeah, national governments and agencies now uh have to meddle an international digital banking, which means once the government or agencies are compromised, you're screwed. So if somebody let's say you have invested in the federal government, right? You give money to the federal reserve, and if that gets compromised or whatever, the government can just make your money disappear.

Kara: 18:46

Sweet.

Ed: 18:47

Yeah, isn't that isn't that nice of them to do that?

Kara: 18:49

That's lovely. Love that for everyone.

Ed: 18:52

Yeah, I've also I I discovered too, like there are some uh video platforms out there that they will pay uh people to upload stuff, like ads and whatnot. But they uh if they find out for whatever reason that the uh you know there's a copyright infringement or whatever, then these companies can sit there and just demonetize you, and then they can go into your bank account and siphon out all the money they gave you over the years. Jesus. Yeah, it's like cool. And if it's a false positive, then the burden's on you to get that fixed.

Kara: 19:29

Nice even better. Yeah, yeah.

Ed: 19:31

Well, you can't even afford a lawyer after that. Like, that's awesome. So yeah, yeah, having digital money is cool, but there's also a lot of downsides, and when things go wrong, it's often completely out of your control, and you're the one that that pays the price. Given today's day and age, electronic banking is here to stay regardless of the cons. The pros weigh out the cons because for anyone to compromise the crazy amount of security banking and government agents put in place is few and far between. It is true, like trying to break into something digitally at the federal level doesn't happen very often. And you've got to get really creative to to make that happen. In the olden days, as in like any time before the internet was widespread, uh you uh how would you go about robbing a bank for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Well, if you're lucky, you might walk away with between a couple thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. However, to somebody who is highly trained and creative, a target such as like a large bank which stores tens of billions of dollars can walk away with millions in the same amount of time it would take to knock over a bank in person. In fact, why waste your time with millions? Why not just shoot for a billion dollars? And I had here in my notes insert Dr. Evil gift here, and I forgot to do that.

Kara: 20:57

Aww.

Ed: 20:58

Yeah, one billion dollars.

Kara: 21:01

One billion. I would have enjoyed the gift, yeah.

Ed: 21:04

Or he does a little finger thing, but that's one billion. I love it when Dr. Evil does it like one million dollars, and everybody's like, Oh, uh, okay, yeah, here you go. Whoa, whoa, wait, one billion dollars. Oh my gosh, what are we gonna do?

Kara: 21:21

Oh man, those movies are silly.

Ed: 21:24

Uh yeah, I miss Austin Powers. I need to watch those sometimes. There's no way I could get my wife to watch those.

Kara: 21:28

Yeah, Gabe sat me down. Not sat me down like like I'm in trouble, but he put it on the TV and it was the first time I watched it recently, maybe like three or four years ago. It has its moments. It has its moments. It does. Would I sit and watch it over and over again? No.

unknown: 21:47

No, no.

Ed: 21:49

The audience is clearly defined for a movie like that.

Kara: 21:53

It's true. Yes, it's true. Um, ladies, just patience. Patients have a good sense of humor. That's all I'll say.

Ed: 22:05

Uh yeah, it's one of those movies you can't walk in and take anything seriously.

Kara: 22:10

Oh, absolutely not. No. And I knew that going into it. I was I was like, I already knew that it was gonna be dumb, so I might as well have fun with it.

Ed: 22:17

Yeah, I think this is the same era of like um American Pie, right? Those shock jock humor movies.

Kara: 22:24

And dude bro movies.

Ed: 22:26

Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Kara: 22:28

Good time. We're on a tangent. We gotta get back to that.

Ed: 22:30

Yeah, yeah. Completely unrealistic to what high school. And I love how they were playing the parts of high schoolers and yet they're like in their 30s.

Kara: 22:37

Yeah. They had they had to make sure they got the legalities out of the way.

Ed: 22:41

Yeah.

Kara: 22:43

Which reminds me, my brother-in-law has a good idea for an episode. I will chat with you about it later.

Ed: 22:48

Oh, okay.

Kara: 22:49

Yeah. I thought it was a great idea.

Ed: 22:51

I'm down for that. Yeah.

Kara: 22:52

We might have to put a little E next to it, but I know.

Ed: 22:56

Let's go.

Kara: 22:57

Yeah.

unknown: 22:58

Okay.

Ed: 22:58

We can maybe we could maybe even monetize that little E.

Kara: 23:02

Might be able to. Back to the bank.

Ed: 23:04

Yeah, like before we monetize stuff, let's let's talk about how we can get our money stolen. So the moral of the story is if you're going to rob a bank, then get creative. Uh, if you have no idea where to begin or how to follow through in such an endeavor, then be prepared to take some notes. Uh, because in today's episode, we're going to see what it takes to attack multiple international banks at the same time, as well as subvert an ultra-secure banking communication protocol. God, that sounds so exciting.

Kara: 23:36

It sounds like a lot of work. A lot of tedious work.

Ed: 23:40

Yes. And be prepared to make clever use of time zones, national holidays, and um and some baccarat while you're at it. Sweet. Okay. Okay. Part two. Let's go back in time to February 6th, 2016.

Kara: 24:01

Happy birthday, brother-in-law.

Ed: 24:04

Oh, same guy. Oh, really?

Kara: 24:06

Happy birthday, buddy.

Ed: 24:07

Oh, wow. Yeah. Born on the same day that saw the greatest bank heist ever in world history.

Kara: 24:14

Yeah, solid.

Ed: 24:16

Yeah. So it's Sunday morning, February 6th, 2016. Dr., I think it's Atir Raman.

Kara: 24:27

We'll go with it.

Ed: 24:28

Yeah, Atier Raman, who was the director of the Bangladesh Bank. And he was reporting to work because, unlike America, Sunday is the first day of the week in Bangladesh. And if you want to know where Bangladesh is, because I honestly had no idea where it is, it's like just east of India on that the Asian continent. It's in between, it's like a small, I think it's like about the size of Ohio. And it's like sandwiched in between two other like Southern Asian countries, like in between, like I want to say like Vietnam and India.

Kara: 25:03

Vietnam's an island.

Ed: 25:05

Vietnam? Vietnam is not an island.

Kara: 25:08

Archipelago? Surrounded by water.

Ed: 25:10

That's a peninsula.

Kara: 25:12

Yeah, that that word. That's it.

Ed: 25:13

Yeah.

Kara: 25:14

Yeah.

Ed: 25:15

But but it goes, it attaches to the mainland of China.

Kara: 25:18

That's right. I know there's lots of water.

Ed: 25:24

Yes. And some jungly stuff.

Kara: 25:26

And some jungly stuff. I swear I've seen a map.

Ed: 25:30

Yeah, Vietnam is kind of weird, but it's in if you look at India, look at Vietnam, look in between that, you'll find Bangladesh. So yeah, like he's reporting to work on Sunday because in Bangladesh, uh it is Fridays, Saturdays are the weekends.

unknown: 25:48

Okay.

Ed: 25:48

Just keep that in the back of your mind. We're gonna revisit that. When he got to the floor, we're pretty uh where pretty much all the executive positions work, like the wire transfer, sales, direct deposits, and other banking-related activities took place. Like just a quick little tangent here. There are two types of banks. Siren just driving by. There are two types of banks. There's the banks that us plebes go to, right? These are the banks where like you enter in the lobby floor. So yeah, there's a banking part that we go in where we deposit our checks back in the old days, where we withdraw money, right? A couple hundred dollars. The other bank is like your business bank. This is where hundreds of thousands of dollars are coming and going. This is like this is the part where you don't go to a teller, you go to somebody who's in an office. This is something like you don't go and talk to these people to pull out even a thousand dollars. No, these are people that like, oh yeah, I need to pull out like five million dollars, uh, five million dollar business loan. Or hey, I've got seven million dollars left on this account, I need to pay it off. Like, this is a completely different animal altogether than what what you and I get to see. Cool. And then there's like, and there's that same part of the bank where like you see, like, okay, why is this bank 60 stories tall? Because on those upper floors, they that's where you start getting into like international wire transfers. Like, how do you give a country five billion dollars in aid? Like, you just don't write a check for that. You need a bank to process all of that. So that's where this our ture ramen guy works. He is on this top floor, and he is the the guy that like you know, him and his team are dealing with sums of money that we can't even fathom. And like these guys don't even these guys probably have never seen a $20 bill, like that's not what they handle. So, um, so yeah, with all this in mind, uh Dr. Ramen. I'm just gonna start calling him Dr. Ramen because that's epic. I'm down, like top ramen. He's like the top guy, so he would be top ramen. Like it. Cardboard salty noodles. With all this in mind, Dr. Ramen was prepared for another day of processing monetary transfers that most of us could spend the rest of our lives working to generate the money. So, like, the average person may generate like two million dollars in salary in their lives. This dude is just throwing two million dollars around as though it were like 20s. That's a wild, really horrible problem to be in. Yeah, yeah, that's gotta suck. Yeah, okay. So, with all this in mind, Dr. Top Raman was prepared for another day of processing at monetary transfers, most of the like we would never see in our lives. Um however, shortly after getting off the elevator, one thing did catch his eye, and when he heard what was going on, he got extremely concerned of what was not going on. The printer wasn't working. Oh dun dun dun.

Kara: 29:17

We've all been there.

Ed: 29:18

Oh yeah, we've all been there. I mean, remember when we were teaching, we were just trying to print up 12 pieces of paper, and it would involve like uninstalling the printer, reinstalling the printer, updating the drivers, physically walking over to the printer to plug your freaking computer into it.

Kara: 29:36

Yeah, like once a week. It was a whole thing.

Ed: 29:38

Oh yeah. And then and then wasn't there like a box in the break room? No, it was it was the uh laminator. Somebody turned on the laminator and caused like a short with the network that contained the printer. It was just the whole thing, it's super janky. So yeah, top ramen here gets off the elevator and finds out that the printer isn't working. And well, it was working, it just wasn't working properly, it was just spitting out blank sheets of paper.

Kara: 30:09

Oh, yeah.

Ed: 30:11

Okay, yeah, yeah, that's right. Every office worker in the world knows how a copy machine slash printer is like one of the most essential pieces of business equipment to ever exist in the world of business, and without it, business can no longer business properly. Great, love it. I took that from an episode of Spongebob. I believe this. Where uh SpongeBob, he like like Spongebob and Patrick are like in this executive like business meeting, and all people were saying was this business, business, business, business. They hold up a graph of like weird lines, like business, business, and business and honestly, corporate does kind of feel like that sometimes.

Kara: 30:50

It's true.

Ed: 30:52

Yeah, and and then like how many times do you hear year over year, week over week, and it's just and you're just reporting numbers that like it all it's designed to do is just make employees feel important when in reality you're bringing in pennies to what the overall function is. So, but yeah, we've all been there, you know. Surrounding the uh the printer was a handful of dudes trying to figure out why the printer wasn't working. Uh yeah, and it seems like there's like a ritual, right? There's always a ritual in trying to get the printer to work again.

Kara: 31:29

I myself have gone through these rituals.

Ed: 31:31

Yes, yes. I and and and this is coming back from memory, and you'll notice how there's like instructions on that little screen to tell you what to do next. And it's usually like open door A, check for a jam. Open door B and remove toner cartridge, check for a jam.

Kara: 31:48

And then you have to put the toner cartridge a couple times.

Ed: 31:52

Oh, yes, yes.

Kara: 31:53

Yeah, yep.

Ed: 31:54

So yeah, close door A, pull out tray three, check for a jam. Give the toner cartridge a good shake before reinstalling it.

Kara: 32:02

Sorry, I got ahead of myself.

Ed: 32:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, a lot of times you can just pull that out, shake it, set it aside, look for a jam, and then put it back in.

Kara: 32:10

Oh, look at that.

Ed: 32:11

Yeah, the shaking of the cartridge is not determined at what step it needs to be in. Just as long as it's shaken before it goes back in.

Kara: 32:19

Right, right, right.

Ed: 32:20

Behind door B. Of course. Check trays one and two for nothing in particular, but just check them regardless. For what nobody knows.

Kara: 32:28

Maybe a jam.

Ed: 32:30

Maybe a jam, yeah. Maybe it's empty. Who knows? Uh close door B, but first open trays four and five. Adjust tray four to fit to fight. Wow, I have fight in here to fit 17 legal paper and tray and fill tray five with lavender colored paper only.

Kara: 32:50

Got it.

Ed: 32:50

Open door B and walk away.

Kara: 32:53

I like that one.

Ed: 32:56

This time you're so frustrated that either you need a drink or you just need to walk away.

Kara: 33:01

Yeah, I like that one.

Ed: 33:02

Um, unplug the machine and wait for that excruciating like one minute before plugging it back in. Close all the doors and reinstall the drivers on all 240 computers that have access to the printer for good measure. Solid. Definitely done that before.

Kara: 33:19

Thorough.

Ed: 33:21

When none of the above works, repeat steps, uh yeah, repeat numbers that are prime numbers, so like one, three, five, and seven. So repeat the prime number steps. Once you've done all those and the printer still doesn't work, then call out a technician who will arrive in the next seven to ten business days to fix it. Last step always be prepared to buy a new eight thousand dollar printer.

Kara: 33:44

All of this tracks. It's facts, yeah.

Ed: 33:51

Yeah, and it's so universally stupid, and you know that's what these guys were doing in Bangladesh. Like, and you always got the dude that's like banging on it, like a bunch of primates, like you have to do banging on it. You got the guy who says he can do it all, like fix it. Uh, you've got the dude that just makes it infinitely worse. You've got Captain like Paper Jam, where every single time he fixes it, there's another paper jam.

Kara: 34:18

That's usually me.

Ed: 34:19

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You curse it to make it more paper jammy.

Kara: 34:23

Yeah, always.

Ed: 34:26

It's like that with the laminating machine, too. And I like how our former boss is like, oh yeah, I purposely jacked up the laminating machine so that nobody can ask me to do it. Like, that's that. So, what's crazy though is that eventually they did kind of get the printer working again. It took them a couple hours, but they got the printer working again. And well, I should say, at least they got paper coming out of it with data on them.

Kara: 34:52

So they're not blank at this point. They have something.

Ed: 34:54

Yeah, yeah, they're not just like using invisible ink anymore. And this data, what this data is, is transactions. Okay. Right? These are transactions that took place over the weekend, and this printer spits all the transactions out so everybody can see what is going on. Without those, it makes it a lot harder to verify what was done over the weekend was valid. So the problems were only just beginning, though. Uh, office workers were reporting that their computers were acting weird and they were connecting to the Swift network. Swift as in like the money transfer system, not the trucking company. And again, eventually they got computers connected to the Swift network, and messages started to flood in from the American Federal Reserve that were really disturbing. Uh, these messages dated all the way back to uh well, yeah, they date all the way back to like Thursday, evening, Friday, and Saturday urgently asking what in the hell was going on at the Bangladesh Bank.

Kara: 36:02

Great.

Ed: 36:03

Right? Then mean what the people, these office workers are in the Bangladesh Bank, like, what what? The you know, Mr. Top Raman is probably just as flabbergasted as well. It's like I heard nothing going on over the weekend. What is this all about? Apparently, all day Friday and going into Saturday, a total of 36 transfer requests came through to transfer money from the Bangladesh bank reserves held in the United States to other banking accounts or other banks and accounts all over the world. So, like there were 36 requests that came in to take money out of the Bangladesh bank account in the US Federal Reserve and to just deposit stuff all over the place.

Kara: 36:53

Okay.

Ed: 36:54

That that's a little weird. Strange. Uh yeah, very strange and very disconcerting, especially when you're hearing it from the United States. Like, yeah, hey, hey, look, I know America's got its fair share of issues going on right now, but economically and financially, it is like the hub of the world, and every major transaction funnels through America at some point in time. So when America is calling you saying, Hey, there's been a big issue with your bank, you're you're gonna pay attention. Like it's a bad deal. A the total amount of money being withdrawn or requested to be withdrawn from the Federal Reserve, according to the Swiss transfer system, was around 951 million dollars.

Kara: 37:43

Sick, lovely.

Ed: 37:45

So it was almost a billion dollars, and some of it made it over, some of it didn't. They didn't really quite know how much because their systems have been down all weekend, so they don't know how much of this is actually missing, and for a country like Bangladesh, that is a significant amount of the gross domestic product.

Kara: 38:07

Yeah, that's uh that's a lot of money.

Ed: 38:10

Yeah, for a small developing nation, a billion dollars to America, yeah, whatever. Like it sucks. But I mean, we have billions of dollars of unaccounted for revenue all over the place. But dude, when your country is the size of the state of Ohio and you're squeezed between India and Vietnam, and nobody in the world can find you on a map, yeah, that's probably a lot of money to that to that nation. So, in other words, as it stood, that Sunday morning, a group of hackers somehow managed to hijack the largest sum of money in banking history, if not all of like the history of stealing stuff. So, part three.

Kara: 38:59

I feel like I could argue that, but I'm not going to.

Ed: 39:03

Well, I mean, I'm sure there was like I'm sure there were heists, like maybe factor in inflation.

Kara: 39:09

Yeah.

Ed: 39:10

But I don't I don't think anybody has stolen almost a billion dollars in cash before. In cash? I don't know, or just monetary value from a business establishment. Every everything at Red Lines, and and you know, if it's online, it's gotta be accurate, right? Um, but I did hear from multiple different financial institution sources and stuff like that that 951 is the largest amount of money stolen or tempted to be stolen from a financial institution.

Kara: 39:43

But if we convert that amount from like ancient money value.

Ed: 39:49

Oh, like what if somebody stole like the equivalency of that from like the Roman Empire's coffers kind of a thing?

Kara: 39:55

Yeah, I wonder, I wonder, like in the ancient world, if there was anything similar to that.

Ed: 40:01

No, no, I I I agree. I think there is. The problem is is that like the idea of factoring inflation only goes back to the early 1900s. It doesn't even really hold true in the 1800s.

Kara: 40:16

That's why it it's hard to compare. It's like comparing oranges and apples.

Ed: 40:21

But if we were though, because honestly, like if we're to go back to the ancient Roman times, they had they probably had no comprehension of what a billion is.

Kara: 40:32

Yeah.

Ed: 40:33

Like, I don't even think they had a Roman numeral for a billion.

Kara: 40:37

Okay, but just for argument's sake, right? How about like the Ottoman Empire or the Persian Empire? If you're going to factor in how much that land was worth with the resources and all that stuff, would that count?

Ed: 40:51

So the land had monetary value. Yeah, if the land had monetary value with the resources it came with, yeah, because I mean we're talking we're talking uh an area of land that was inhabited by it. I mean, it was dang near the size of the United States.

Kara: 41:07

That's what I'm saying.

Ed: 41:09

So, yeah, I guess it really kind of boils down to the to the wording of it.

Kara: 41:13

Yeah, I'm just being annoying at this point.

Ed: 41:15

Well, no, it it is a good point because, like, man, if you're factoring the Roman Empire, in terms of all the land that they took over, holy crap. But that was over the course of hundreds of years. I think the heart of the statement that 951 million dollars, this is like in one sitting. This is 951 million dollars done by a group of people at one time. There's no way Rome took all that land in one sitting. It took them hundreds of years to and the Ottoman Empire started off big somehow and then just kind of like whittled down over the centuries.

Kara: 41:57

I don't know. I feel like I could probably come up with a good argument, but I'm not gonna do that right now. Let's continue.

Ed: 42:02

Yeah, no, like let me know the argument because I like I'd be kind of curious, and I would need to look up I because I I was looking at you know, like Fortune magazine and all that kind of stuff.

Kara: 42:15

Yeah, and that makes sense for you know 2015 and 16. Just you know, leave it to me to bring up an argument about ancient economic resources versus 2015. Yeah, exactly. Like it's fine.

Ed: 42:31

So part three. Let's go back roughly a year. I know I have such exciting titles for these parts.

Kara: 42:38

That's okay.

Ed: 42:39

Where where you have titles like you know, after like alcoholic beverages and stuff like that. I have titles one year before.

Kara: 42:49

One year later. The titles are the last thing I do.

Ed: 42:54

Yeah, no, I I do my titles, I do my titles for the sole purpose of helping me stay on track.

Kara: 43:00

That's understandable.

Ed: 43:02

Whereas I would spend way too much time trying to think of a funny title. Not that I haven't done that before, but okay, let's go back in time to a location we have no idea. Perfect, right? We're just going back to October of 2014. Some hackers got together and came to the conclusion that they wanted to make some money. Uh, we still to this day don't know who these people were. We don't know where they were based out of. We have no idea of their setting whatsoever. All we know is the Bangladesh Bank, and the only characters that we know by name is Dr. Top Rahman, the printer named Steve, who is possessed, and then the Federal Reserve.

Kara: 43:46

Like awesome.

Ed: 43:48

Those are her characters.

Kara: 43:50

So let's do it. I'm here for it.

Ed: 43:54

So yeah, they wanted to uh they wanted to make some money. Getting a job is out of the question, probably because uh Um, from where they were from, there were no jobs. We do have an idea what country they hailed from, which I'll get to later on. Um, or better yet, hacking was their job. And if they wanted to stay living, then this is what they had to do. So these people might have been under penalty of death if they didn't do this. Um, thankfully, these guys, well, thankfully, I guess, but yeah, thankfully these guys were insanely, incredibly smart and creative. Uh, the group decided or the the group decided that they were going to rob a bank. Given that they were hackers, barging into a bank with guns and yelling demands would not be very productive, uh, given how much money they wanted. With a smash and grab job, they would net maybe a few thousand dollars, and they would have to figure out how to escape from the heart of whatever city they decided that had a fat, juicy bank waiting to be robbed. Robbing any establishment this uh this way was so far outside their skill sets, probably because they're a bunch of scrawny little emaciated dudes. Like, I'm sorry, when you think of the world of hackers, you don't think like six foot eight, two hundred and fifty pounds linebacker kind of person. Uh, unfortunately, we think small, skinny dudes living in their mom's basement. Right. We've all seen that South Park World of Warcraft episode, right? Where they're all sitting in the basement and they're all like fat and greasy or sickly. That's what we think of hackers, even though most hackers are just average sized people.

Kara: 45:34

Normal, normal people, yeah. Yeah, like you never know.

Ed: 45:37

Yeah, right. They not uh not all hackers walk around like Neo from the Matrix.

Kara: 45:41

In fact, they would kind of I wouldn't argue that though.

Ed: 45:44

Yeah, I mean that would be kind of cool if we did live in a society where people's professions determine how they dressed all the time.

Kara: 45:51

No, I don't like that part.

Ed: 45:53

Yeah, that's that's a little Eldis Huxley, but but like they they wear clothing that represents the profession, but the like the c the the clothing is cool looking though.

Kara: 46:04

I don't know. My point was just that Keanu was looking good in that movie.

Ed: 46:08

Uh he looks good today.

Kara: 46:10

He does, he looks great. He's a vampire, but you know, Keanu.

Ed: 46:13

Like that guy is in his 50s, man.

unknown: 46:15

Yeah.

Ed: 46:16

And you see him in John Wick. Oh, don't get me wrong, man. I'm as straight as they shoot, but if Keanu Reese asked me on a date, I'm be like, dude, I'll fly if you buy.

Kara: 46:27

Also, he was really funny and beef. All right.

Ed: 46:29

Yes. He's also like a generally a nice guy, too.

Kara: 46:32

That's yeah, that's what I've heard.

Ed: 46:33

Like, nobody in Hollywood has anything bad to say about him. I guess he still takes the subway.

Kara: 46:38

Go through.

Ed: 46:39

Um, yeah. Anyways. Anyway, um, robbing any establishment this way was so far aside their skill sets that they would end up in the news for all the wrong reasons. And who wants to end up in the news for all the wrong reasons? The group decided their attack wasn't going to be a smash and grab job, but a wild, insane hack. Probably one of the most impressive ever. Uh, but not just a wild hack uh where they digitally break in, steal tens of thousands of dollars, and then back out. That's how most of these work. People get in, like they hack into a computer system and they take what they can and then they back out and delete all tracks. That is basically the hacker version of a smash and grab job. No, this hacker was going to take months, extending over a year to pull off, and patience was going to win the day. After some discussion, they all agreed to knock over the Bangladesh Bank in the heart of Dhaka, which is the capital of Bangladesh. But why this location? Like, you don't think a small developing nation is like, do they really have that much money? It's like you go into Somalia and you try to rob a bank in Somalia, you might get like a bag of rice and maybe a chicken and three dollars.

Kara: 47:59

Isn't Bangladesh kind of big though?

Ed: 48:01

Uh well that's the thing. It is an up-and-coming country.

Kara: 48:07

Well, it's it's kind of a thing right now.

Ed: 48:09

Yeah, I know it is. And and I think this is one of the reasons why they chose Bangladesh, because um Dhaka is one of the most largely, like largest and densely populated cities in the world with over 36 million residents. Bangladesh in the mid-2000s was a small country that was extremely poor. Like Google map it, and you can see there are parts like most of it is pretty third world, but there's also parts that are exploding with tourism and and all that. So, and tourism is kind of a big deal because that is people bringing money from the rest of the world in, right? A country can make money by selling resources or by manufacturing stuff or producing things or whatever, but that's like they're having to shell up money on their own in their own economy to try and get stuff out and bring money in that way. But with tourism, it is just like I don't want to say it's free money, but it's just money that just arrives and it comes from all over the world, and you can do a lot with tourism funds. And like I remember seeing commercials for like come visit fabulous Vietnam. Wow, you wouldn't ever see a commercial like that in the late 1960s.

Kara: 49:29

I don't remember what episode that was, but we did an episode on that.

Ed: 49:32

Oh, yeah, yeah, that was that was that was another wild one. I'll link to the episode in in the uh the show notes. Great. So so yeah, like Bangladesh was booming with popularity in tourism and whatnot. And the country understood that yes, they have a ton of money coming in, and they could be sitting on a ton of cash, but the population as a whole was pretty broke, which means that you know, if the society is broke but they're sitting on a ton of money, law enforcement's gonna be weaker, cybersecurity is gonna be weaker, uh, infrastructure is gonna be weaker, right? And the country as a whole understood the dynamic of a rising revenue streams with fundamentally under-established security system, so that their best option was to store billions of dollars in the United States Federal Reserve, which a lot of developing nations do, right? If they know they can't protect the money in their own country, they call up America, right? And it's like that what is it, the Greenwalt's bank and Harry Potter?

Kara: 50:36

Oh, like um, green gods.

Ed: 50:39

Green got, yes. Yeah. Uh like so people would call up the Federal Reserve and be like, hey, you know, I'm such and such country from the heart of Africa. Uh, we just got a billion dollars in. Can we store it in one of your vaults at the United States Federal Reserve? Sure thing, because all that does is just make America wealthier. So a lot of developing nations will do that. Bangladesh is one of them. And to date, no one has actually really broken into the Federal Reserve. It's a pretty secure place. It is uh I follow some podcasts all about like internet hacking and whatnot. That's actually where I got this story from. Um, people have tried to get in the Federal Reserve, like cyber-wise, does not end well. It they will get you. So it's one of those things where if you can't beat them, join them. However, even though Bangladesh Bank wasn't a as secure from a cybersecurity as many other banks in developed nations across the globe, stealing nearly $1 billion from them wasn't going to be a walk in the park because that money is off site. If the money was located solely in the bank, right, then that would be easy. Just install some software in the computers at the bank, mimic literally anyone who works there, and then transfer the money to wherever you want. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. This is probably the reason why Bangladesh doesn't keep their money, all their money inside the their national bank and they keep it in New York City in the Federal Reserve. However, since everyone in Bangladesh's financial system knew that the best security involves duct tape and thoughts and prayers, uh, the money the hackers wanted was located in the U.S. Federal Reserve. Say what you want about America in terms of anything, but America is a tough nut to crack when it comes to trillions of dollars the country sits on, and the fact that um it seems like all the money uh being transferred around the world will make its way through America at some point in time. It's just how America is situated, where money goes from one hemisphere to the other hemisphere and it makes its way through the United States in the process. It's one of the reasons why this country is so wealthy, but yet so loaded with debt, and everybody's living paycheck to paycheck, and I could go on. There is a litany of issues, but this country does sit on a lot of money. Um, so the hackers came up with an ingenious plan. They knew that the Bangladesh Bank uh was as secure as a screen door in a submarine, and the Federal Reserve needs like an act of God to break into. The hackers knew that Bangladesh Bank would have direct communication with the Federal Reserve, and that is the key. The idea was simple set up some bank accounts under various names uh across the world, different time zones, imitate a Bangladesh bank employee or a series of them, reach out to the Federal Reserve, and then initiate a series of wire transfers to those WA accounts across the world. Cool. The amounts would only be for like a few million dollars here, a few million dollars there, and so forth. Uh, these would be considered smaller withdrawals. I know, smaller withdrawal of you know three to four million dollars. Woo! I know. Like, you know, I'm checking my bank account, and like a big withdrawal is like 20 bucks. So these people are literally operating at like 50,000 times more money for their withdrawals. So, like, the idea was to kind of spread out the transfers, right? To have multiple people at your bank reach out to the Federal Reserve to initiate a variety of different transfers going all over the world. That means there's just gonna be a variety of people at the Federal Reserve. Uh, it's almost like they have separate account managers for separate regions. So, like, you know, like when we work in trucking or what we currently do, you know, I could have a customer place a massive order and it has nothing to do with you. Like they could place a massive order with me, you'd be none the wiser. Same thing, you could have a customer initiate a gigantic order through you, and I wouldn't be aware of it at all. That's kind of how the idea worked with the Federal Reserve, is that you have these people that would oversee regions all over the world. So, yeah, you could have a bunch of money go into Sri Lanka, but the guy that oversees Europe would be none the wiser that, you know, RCBC in the Philippines is getting like 90 million dollars. The guy who oversees Australia, and he doesn't care. So that was kind of the idea is like spread it out so that no one person can fully see what's going on and send a red flag. There is one remaining obstacle, and it's a huge one. In between the Bangladesh Bank and the US Federal Reserve is Swift, and this Swift thing is kind of wild when you think about what it does. It stands for the Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications. That sounds thrilling. Could you imagine those WIG meetings? And I feel like everybody at that uh at the Swift like system place, I think everybody probably sounds like Ben Stein.

Kara: 56:16

I would get bored pretty quick. I don't know about you, but also I'm just not one to be excited about banking and numbers and stuff. It's not my job. Not not for me. No, that's okay.

Ed: 56:31

Especially when you know you can't do anything with those numbers. Yeah. Like making minimum wage and having to balance a checkbook of a billionaire would be absolutely dreadful, I think. Like, oh yeah, I get to go figure out all the finances surrounding a mega yacht that Jeff Bezos is buying. Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out do I pay my phone bill or do I pay my car insurance bill?

Kara: 56:58

To be fair, I think at least here the bankers and financiers who are handling accounts like that do make decent money.

Ed: 57:07

Yes, because uh they they have the accountability of it all in and they also probably have like a master's degree. They yeah, especially if you're at the Federal Reserve level. I'm I'm assuming that these guys are uh financially sound. Yeah. In fact, they probably do a like a pretty hefty background check on these folks before they hire them. Yeah, because if they are living paycheck to paycheck, they've got millions of dollars of debt and their lives suck. Um, the Federal Reserve be like, yeah, no, these guys stand a high chance of stealing from us.

Kara: 57:40

Yeah.

Ed: 57:42

System. Like, we're not gonna do it. So yeah, but still, it would be depressing, even if you were making decent money to be transferring billions of dollars on a daily basis. Like, can I get like a 0.01% cut of that? That'd be great. Yes, Society of or Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, and it's basically a messaging system on steroids. That that's that's all it is. It is like a text message system uh that is like uncrackable and unhackable.

Kara: 58:17

Nice.

Ed: 58:17

So Swift acts as a go-between from one financial establishment to another, and most of the world's governments and major banking systems use it to initiate multi-million to multi-billion dollar transfers. The system allows for one bank to reach out to another bank to either ask or send money so that no one can intercept the request or impersonate someone at a bank to initiate a transfer of money fraudulently.

Kara: 58:47

I can see why this is a hurdle for our hacker friends.

Ed: 58:49

Uh-huh. This is gonna pose kind of a big problem, but kind of like the Maginot line, beginning of World War II. Uh the Maginot line was going to be a pretty hefty thing for the Germans to get over, but their solution made the Maginot line and the French look really, really dumb. And these guys are gonna kind of do the same thing. So it's like one of these things like how have you ever wondered how like billions of dollars in financial aid goes from one country to another? A cash transfer would chew up an entire an entire cargo ship and take weeks or months to process, assuming the cargo ship doesn't get hijacked by pirates. Yes, pirates are still a thing, they're out there. In fact, they're more terrifying than ever.

Kara: 59:36

Yes.

Ed: 59:37

Physical checks are out of the question, right? If I walk into a bank and try to cash a check written out for $20 billion, the teller would call a manager over and then the manager would tell me to piss off. And this is all assuming I don't get my butt mugged on the way to cash that check. Somehow that would leak out that I'm sitting on a $20 billion check. Okay, so checks are out of the question. That leaves wiring the money over, and it works great for sending over large sums of money electronically, and the transfer is usually like instantaneous. This is all assuming the person wiring the money to another bank is in the up and up as well as the bank receiving it. That's where the Swift side of things come in. And the Swift what the system what they do is they act as that intermediary for the communication. So the person requesting the transfer must do the following. One, be a part of a bank large enough to be in Swift system. So if you are like the president of Bob's bank in Mobile, Alabama, you're not gonna be you're not gonna have access to the Swift system. Sorry. Like these have to be international, uh, they have to be worth like a certain amount of money, have a certain amount of assets, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, be in a position high enough, so I actually have the job title high enough where they can get to log on to the Swift system. Not everybody has that access. Only a handful of people get this access. And they are given an 8 to 11 uh alphanumeric code to assign uh yeah, code to assign to the request that will then be verified by Swift. So like I would be given a code to identify me, and then like basically I would go to the Swift and say, Hey, um, I need to get a hold of the Federal Reserve to trans over, transfer over $50 million to this one bank. Here's my code. This is the code of like basically the code that we're going to assign to this order, or I guess you could call it the uh the service order. That's kind of like what we'd be familiar with, old work ID or the PO or whatever. And it's all designed, even at like what we do for a living, it's all designed for security purposes. You have to have all this information in order for anything to proceed. And there are also other multi-factor uh authentication procedures out there to ensure legitimacy. However, though, a lot of that's under lock and key. And uh, I went onto the Swift uh systems website to try to figure out what else they do. Um yeah, they don't tell you.

Kara: 01:02:29

I'd imagine not. Yeah.

Ed: 01:02:33

Yeah, they're they'll they'll tell you stuff for like marketing purposes because it's very expensive to use them, but they're not gonna tell you all their trade secrets. Like, good luck. Um, which means like the things they must know because they deal with like international geopolitics, like they probably know what makes the world really work. Like, yeah, it's almost like a secret society, right? The skull and bones and the Illuminati, and you know, they're like the little puppeteers that control the world in some weird conspiratorial fashion. Um, or it's probably like some dude in his basement that's just like maybe it's both, which is always my go-to compromise.

Kara: 01:03:16

It's both.

Ed: 01:03:17

Yeah, it's both. I I tend to steer away from the whole conspiracy crap because there's one rule about conspiracies, like secret societies and all that stuff. There's one rule that is true 100% of the time. If you go looking for a conspiracy, you will find them, whether they exist or not.

Kara: 01:03:37

Yeah, yeah, I I I am not a big fan of conspiracy theories personally, but that's just me.

Ed: 01:03:43

Like they're they're fun, like they make for some fun stories, but man, I can't hang my hat on like the dude on the grassy knoll and the JFK assassination and it being a part of you know, a presidential bid to get America involved with the Vietnam War. And I'm although uh there is they did release the uh files on Lee Harvey Oswald, and um that is interesting. Like they were the FBI was watching him for a very long time. Yep. So like that's the closest I could get to a conspiracy theory. But anyways, um if needed, Swift can also loop in intermediary banks, right? So like um, and that happened in this case. So Swift can be like, okay, yep, sure, we'll get a hold of Federal Reserve, tell the Federal Reserve to start transferring over money, but for even added layer of security, they can throw in a mediary bank. And in this case, like um the Federal Reserve, they took X millions of dollars that were being transferred to the Sri Lanka account that these hackers set up, and they ran it through a German bank as well. So they would receive it, they would count it, verify it, and then they would send it over, right? It's just another set of eyes to keep things cool. And if everything checks out okay and the Swift says, yep, this is legitimate, then the two banks will initiate the wire transfer. So the Swift thing doesn't actually handle the money, they just verify people's identities and they just verify like they're kind of like the telephone operators, they get both people talking after they verify who's who. So I remember I I mentioned the Sri Lanka thing here because um our hackers, our intrepid hackers, unknowingly had tens of millions of dollars get routed through the German bank and then sent to a specific account in Sri Lanka um as another layer of protection. And this whole Sri Lanka thing is going to really serve a purpose here. Lastly, the Swiss system records and tracks everything from who requested the transfer, who sent it, uh, where the money came from, where it went, and What dates and times. So, like the Swift thing keeps track of all of that. Now, once it gets to the bank and its intended purpose, they have visibility in who took the money out, right? So if I have $50 million go to a bank via the Federal Reserve and the Swift system set it up, and it goes to this bank that I have the money transferred to, and I pull that money out. They know that I pulled it out, they know when, they know how much, all that stuff, but they don't know what I do with it afterwards. Got it. Because that's my money. Like it's none of their business. So that too is something to kind of think about. So, in other words, the Swiss system was set up to prevent exactly what the hackers had in mind for this robbery. Um, that this this was a perfectly well thought-out program that can really screw things up. So our hackers had a way around the SWIF system, and in fact, they relied on the Swift system to help them out. So they didn't see the Swift system as like a huge hurdle. Instead, they're like, oh, we can use this to our advantage, which is pretty cool. So starting February of 2015, right? We started this whole discussion in October of 2014. Now we're in February, things are in motion. And this ran through the summer months of 2015. Massive amounts of phishing emails were being sent out to all the employees of the Bangladesh Bank. So now these hackers they put together some phishing emails as well as some software that could look like something innocuous, like a PDF or an audio clip of an interview or whatever. Right? This is the reason why they always say at the corporate level, don't open an email attachment unless you know the person who's sending it to you, because that's how this software can get into your computer. Uh, in fact, whenever I see personal email, if there's an attachment, I don't even open it, period. Even if I know the person, because it it is scary how quickly somebody can gain access to your computer via a uh an attachment. Um, there's software out there that is so scary that if you get like a text message with a link on it and you tap on that link, it will automatically install software under your phone that will give somebody else complete control of it, where they can see what you're typing, they can see your screen, your cameras are constantly recording you, your microphone's always recording you. Uh, it is absolutely insanely terrifying how quickly this can happen. And in the case of something like this with the Sri Lanka bank, if somebody if somebody opened up one of these attachments from these hackers, uh their computer will be instantly compromised, and then all the computers in the bank network will be compromised as well. It it doesn't take much. So, like the software is so insane that not only does give the hacker complete control of the computer, but the hacker can also see things on the computer that the user himself would not normally see, such as the secure network protocols, i.e., like the Swift communication numbers and the account numbers, uh, the POs, uh, the 8 to 11 alphanumeric digit uh security codes that people are given. They will have access to all of that um that the your normal employee can't see. Uh visibility into network activities of every machine attached to the network. Uh they can record every uh everything typed on that machine as well as anything else typed on other infected machines, and then uh send and receive emails outside of the infected machine so they can see what other computers have coming in for communication. Imagine like being able to hack into your Google chat or your your Teams.

Kara: 01:10:08

Yeah.

Ed: 01:10:09

Like, and they can see all of that in real time. Perhaps the most important part of this software is that it allows for remote access so that the hacker can access the machine remotely, and then the software will go back and then delete any record of any changes so that it looks like the computer is clear of any virus or malware. The hackers even have the access uh to network-attached devices like printers, fax machines, the printer, phones, Steve, our brave little printer. Steve, not Steve. The software was so advanced that modern-day antivirus programs are powerless to contain or delete it. In fact, uh I uh I always tell people this like, oh yeah, I got some Trojan worm or whatever on my computer. And I'm like, well, first of all, staff of porn sites, and then because that's where they come from. No pun intended. And like once these things are on your computer, I don't care what antivirus software you use. Once your computer detects it, like uh Windows Defender is actually very, very good. Uh, once it detects it, you're you're screwed. You cannot delete it, you cannot get rid of it. Even if you did go in and manually start deleting files associated with this malware that's on your computer, it will do fun things like break your ability to connect to the internet, or it'll do other cutesy little things like send your tell your power supply to dump all of its electricity through your processor, thus frying your machine, and now it is useless. Good. So, like anybody who ever says, Oh, yeah, my antivirus will catch it and get rid of it. No, you have to do a clean reinstall of everything. And if your computer is uh connected to like a home network, guess what? Everybody that has a computer in your home connected to that network, like the Wi-Fi or whatever, they have to reinstall everything as well. There, there's just no way around it. It is so easy for these software developers or these malware developers to just make it so that the antivirus stuff is useless and deleting it, not necessarily useless in detecting it. Like Windows Defender does a very good job detecting stuff. Um, but once it finds it, sorry, reinstall everything. So all it would take is one person in the branch to open the email and open the attachment, and that is exactly what happened. Three employees out of the hundreds that worked at the Bangladesh Bank opened the attachment and immediately got hacked. Oh, jeez. And it's not because humans are stupid, it's just that human beings are human and we're trusting. And like you would send me, like, you could send me an email, and I would have no problems opening it. Um, but that email could have easily come from somebody else. Uh, somebody could have hacked your computer, sent the email via your username, sign-on, password, and everything, I would be none the wiser. And so, like in the old days, computer viruses tried to like break your computer or like do the infamous porn storm where you just have one window after another pop up on your computer and you can't exit out of them fast enough. Um, now the viruses don't want to make their presence known. Now the malware wants to stay hidden, away, out of sight. In fact, they don't want to mess with your computer to like slow it down or give anybody pause for concern. I I remember, I think it was like the early 2010s, there was a stat that was put out, I think it was by Gibson Research, and um I guess like 75% of the Windows computers in in the early 2010s, 70% of the world's Microsoft-based computers were infected with some sort of malware.

Kara: 01:14:18

Sounds like a parasite where it wants to feed but it doesn't want to kill.

Ed: 01:14:22

Yeah. Well, and I was thinking of doing um some episodes on some of these, like probably one of the most famous ones was where um a hospital in England got infected with ransomware and it shut down the entire hospital, and then this hospital was connected to a bunch of other ones on the network, and then they started to shut down as well, and unless they paid X millions of dollars in Bitcoin or whatever. And the sad thing is that yeah, they may give you the code to get all your information back, but the virus is still there and they can lock you out at any time they see fit. So yeah. I when you get those stupid testing fish emails from your IT folks, uh, there's a reason why they're doing it, is because it's so easy to fall for it. We had our remember our old boss who would constantly click on those and have to take that stupid training course. I think he got nailed like six times.

unknown: 01:15:22

Yeah. Yeah.

Ed: 01:15:25

So yeah, three employees opened it up, they got instantly hacked, and since the three computers got infected, the hackers went to work on their next phase of the heist, um, accessing the Swift system so that they would have all the codes and multifactori authentification to use uh Swift to get a hold of the Federal Reserve to start requesting hundreds of millions of dollars to be sent to the hackers. So once they got access, then they started like making friends with the Swift network. And in fact, it is believed sometime later that they think some of these hackers actually worked for the Swift system because these guys were so fluent and so efficient with that service. Like how they they would have had to have known prior how it works by some sort of inside information. So, yeah, they befriended the Swift network, and then shortly after the hackers gained access, they went out to 36 other banks across the world and opened up checking accounts under the name of like various foundations and charities and private investors and and all that kind of stuff. The key was to spread out the transfers in a way that looked like all of them were pulled at random and not like one person or two people or whatever is doing all of this, right? Lots of different accounts, meaning lots of different folks that probably don't talk to each other would be initiating these, and lots of different folks who probably don't even work on the same floor in the Federal Reserve are processing all of these, and as opposed to like all 36 requests go to one person, yeah. That's gonna be an instant like red flag. Uh this ain't right.

Kara: 01:17:04

Yeah.

Ed: 01:17:04

The final stage, actually, no, sorry, jumping ahead here. Um, some of the most notable accounts were uh the Shalika Foundation, when that was set up in Sri Lanka. So that's a very, very, very important account. And then the other one is five separate accounts set up at the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation or the RCBC um in Makati City in the Philippines. So there's five accounts there, and then there's the Shalika Foundation, and then there was a whole like dozens of others all over the world. The final stage of this wild plan, and perhaps the most ingenious, in my opinion, was the selected date and time of implementing everything. Ultimately, the group decided on late on the day of February 5th, 2016. And this date wasn't just like they didn't throw a dart at a calendar and be like, all right, cool. This is what this is gonna be the day. Uh this is the this February 5th to February 9th. These four or five days are like the most unique four or five days in the world in terms of the calendar. So there were several reasons for choosing this. The weekend of Bangladesh is Friday and Saturday, so no one would be in the office at the Bangladesh Bank on those days, right? Perfect time to access their Swift network and start initiating transfers. The main bank accounts that would see the majority of the money were in the Philippines, which observed Chinese New Year. So they would be shut down all weekend, including Monday the 8th. So they were closed for the weekend. Um, yeah, they were closed for the weekend, not to mention that the Philippines is in a different time zone than Bangladesh.

Kara: 01:19:05

Okay.

Ed: 01:19:06

So we've got Bangladesh and then we've got the Philippines. They're operating in two different time zones. Lastly, the Federal Reserve that was going to be hacked is in New York City, which is a whopping 11 hours behind Bangladesh. So you're gonna see why this is important because uh Bangladesh is 11 hours, they're like one full shift ahead of everything that can happen in New York. And remember, New York doesn't observe Chinese New Year's, and their weekends are Saturday, Sunday. Can you kind of see how this is lining up?

Kara: 01:19:42

Oh, yeah.

Ed: 01:19:43

Right? There's a lot of days where a lot of people are going to be out of the office and it's gonna be really, really hard. There's gonna be four days where all the parties involved can't even get together until like the following Tuesday or Wednesday. So that gives a lot of time for a lot of chicanery to go down. By February of 2016, everything was put in place and ready to go to work. It took a little longer than a year to put together. If everything worked as planned, the hackers would finish the weekend nearly one billion dollars richer. So February 5th, 2016, go time. So now it's like Oceans 11, right? The climax of the whole story, everything is gonna go into effect, and it's kind of anticlimatic. It's just like, you know, after a year of planning, scheming, and literally making no money, our hackers implemented the bank heist at the end of the Bangladesh um day. So Thursday, everybody goes home for their weekend. However, once these hackers hit go, because Bangladesh bank was empty, they literally hit the go button on their computer, which was already connected to the Bangladesh computer. So they were basically working remote. Like they had access to everything. Um, they hit go and like clockwork, the hacked computer started reaching out to the Swift system with a series of withdrawals from the Federal Reserve on behalf of the Bangladesh Bank. Uh, since the banker at the Bangladesh bank had all the credentials, right? And I do the banker with quotes, uh, the Swift system felt no need to express any concern. And, you know, the Swift side of things was like, yeah, no, this checks out. They have all the codes. It sounds like it, right? They weren't, they didn't sound like they were out of place or anything. Um, the hackers knew how the Swift system worked so fluently that they could word messages and requests so efficiently that no one at the Swift uh system could tell that the hackers were using the computers. And this is where like later on investigators kind of discovered like, oh yeah, these guys had to have had some sort of insider experience, worked for the Swiss system, um, primarily because you can tell when someone is an imposter just by how they communicate. Yeah, it's no different than like like you can tell if somebody's is French, like they could speak perfect English, but you're like, Yeah, but I'm picking up on that French. Like I I can hear it.

Kara: 01:22:25

Or it's like if you talk to somebody from the Midwest and they call soda pop, and then they look at you funny when you call it soda.

Ed: 01:22:32

Yeah, yep. Or a crick versus a creek.

Kara: 01:22:35

Yep.

Ed: 01:22:35

Uh mosquito is a skeeter. Wash is marsh.

Kara: 01:22:41

Lightning bugs, fireflies.

Ed: 01:22:44

Yes. Yeah, my whole family's from the Midwest. I kind of grew up listening to all that. Yeah. So yeah, you can tell, like you can tell somebody's out of place just by how they communicate. Um, you know, kind of like you get a new guy at work, right? They have no idea what they were doing. You can tell within 10 seconds that they're new, just by how they're they're talking. Meanwhile, the folks at the Federal Reserve started to get withdrawal and transfer requests from the Bangladesh Bank account to a series of banks across the world. The requests were spaced out in such a way that no two people at the reserve would get too many requests and raise an eyebrow. Perfectly planned. So eventually, after an hour or so, the hackers started to see money get deposited into their dummy accounts. Couple million here, a million there. Oh, another three million just got deposited in this account. Hey, five million popped up in the RB, yeah, the RB RCBC accounts, and so on. Like they probably had like these screens set up in all these accounts, and you start seeing money start populating in all these accounts. It was like kind of like watching one of those PBS fundraisers where like someone would ring a bell when a large donation came in, except like this was in reverse. Like yikes. And this was probably like generating more money than what PBS has to work with, even on a five-year time frame. Oh no. No, we gotta take care of Ken Burns. I agree. How else is he gonna make his documentaries? So throughout the course of the night and going into Friday for the hackers, money kept pouring into various checking accounts, and by now the hackers had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars. Even if the whole thing went tits up, like right now, if the whole thing just went to crap, they would still walk away with a massive amount of money.

Kara: 01:24:50

Yeah.

Ed: 01:24:50

So as the dollar science kept raining on our hackers all day uh or all Friday long, something did happen that threw a major wrench in the works. Remember that Shalika Foundation, that account in Sri Lanka?

Kara: 01:25:05

Mm-hmm. The one that you said was important?

Ed: 01:25:08

Yes. Yep. Well, the money that came out of the Bangladesh bank account in the Federal Reserve went through an intermediary bank in Germany called the Deutsche Bank. Uh, they're actually a uh or they used to be a sponsor of the uh PGA. Like they're a major, major international financial institution. My grandfather had uh investments with Deutsche Bank. I just love saying Deutsche. Yeah. German. I'm always looking for an excuse to say Deutsche.

Kara: 01:25:40

Um more angry you sound, the better it sounds.

Ed: 01:25:43

Deutsche. Das Deutsche. I don't know what the German word for bank is. It's probably like 37 letters long. So the Deutsche Bank uh was an intermediary bank, and they were like another set of eyes, and they processed this payment that would go to the Slika Foundation in Sri Lanka. Just normal procedural stuff. Nothing to worry about. Uh yeah, nothing to worry about except that one of the hackers or the Federal Reserve folks, somebody misspelled foundation. And the banker in Germany saw Fundation. Oh no, you missed oh, foundation, yes. That is usually a telltale sign that like you're being fished or something's not right. Like that's one of the things they tell you. What's that?

Kara: 01:26:33

Fun is the foundation of this operation. Fundation.

Ed: 01:26:39

But yeah, they always tell you in like cybersecurity classes, like, pay attention to the email, like look for misspelled words, look for you know, at the bottom, right? Hit reply to this email for, and then look at that email address and see if it's not spelled correctly. Uh, that is usually a telltale sign. And in this case, Foundation, somebody at that Deutsche Bank was like, hmm, something's not right. By the time the Deutsche Bank reached out to the Federal Reserve, um, everybody had wrapped up for the day in New York because it's, you know, end of the day Friday, they're going on their vacation or going on their weekend. Yeah. So there was no one there to receive this concern from the Germans. Furthermore, when Deutsche Bank reached out to Bangladesh, because they even they were like, okay, fine, the Federal Reserve can't do anything, then we're gonna call over to Deutsch or to Bangladesh and report the fishing behavior, but nobody was in the office because Friday there is like a Saturday to the US. Crap. And then like Sri Lanka is in a different time zone. So they couldn't even like they couldn't verify anything over there. To be on the safe side, Deutsche Bank immediately put a hold on any. Of the Bangladesh bank requests and sounded the alarm that something fishy was going on, even though no one was in the office in Bangladesh, uh Bling Bang Blingladesh and the US. So this act saved the Bangladesh Bank and the Federal Reserve hundreds of millions of dollars. So whoever caught that over there in Germany, I hope they got a promotion or whatever, because that is a wild, like very, very sharp guy or girl who caught that because it did save hundreds of millions of dollars. Like, good on them. Yeah. So this was a slight hiccup on the hacker's part. But even if they couldn't process any more transfers, they would still walk away with almost 100 million out of the 951 million goal. So like they actually had money, like they actually were sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars. But because the whole Deutsche Bank thing went down, a lot of that money got transferred back. So they lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Uh so it's like there's a grace period once money gets deposited in the sender can like revoke that uh within a certain period of time, and that's what Deutsche Bank did was like, nope, we are stopping everything and we are pulling whatever we can back.

Kara: 01:29:17

Yeah.

Ed: 01:29:18

So slight hiccup, but we're still talking like tens of millions of dollars that these guys got. As a result of this, most of the 36 worldwide accounts failed to get much more money deposited. So the hackers had to rely on their RCBC accounts to harbor the most amount of cash, which was located in the Philippines and was honoring Chinese New Year. So they were going to be closed all the way through Monday. So this gave the hackers a lot of time. By Saturday, the hackers realized that the printer in Bangladesh Bank kept track of every transaction, either outbound or inbound. So if employees came in on Sunday to see the printer with a bunch of papers in the tray, uh, then they could look at those papers and tell, like, uh yeah, the what's all these transfers? Like they would have caught on much sooner. Uh so the hackers hacked the printer. Not Steve. They gained access. Yeah, not Steve. They violated Steve. Uh they gained access through the computer that they hacked via the phishing strategy used the prior year. They told the printer to just print blank pages over and over. And I and I kind of wonder like uh how things would have panned out if the hackers told the printer to print like pages of gibberish or come up with like fake transactional information to really kind of throw off investigators. Um, I kind of feel like that would have bought them more time.

Kara: 01:30:48

Possibly, yeah.

Ed: 01:30:49

Possibly, who knows? This is what everyone walked to on Sunday, right? Dr. Top Raman, this is this is what was going on Sunday morning uh when he came in, and everyone just assumed that the printer was on the Fritz, right? Because we've all seen that before, where these printers get a mind of their own. Uh, not sure if this particular printer is like any other uh office printer and prone to dying and freezing up. And that is why the office workers they weren't too worried. Like, yeah, stupid printer.

Kara: 01:31:22

Yeah, we'll let Bob fix it.

Ed: 01:31:24

A, then Trey B, and then all jam it six times.

Kara: 01:31:28

And yeah, right? Get it.

Ed: 01:31:30

As a final coup de gras, the hackers told their software to start deleting any and all activity with the Swift system. So get rid of all the records, delete everything so that they couldn't find any information on what was going on. So this is like the same as wiping off fingerprints, you know, getting rid of the getaway car, all that kind of stuff. Just digital versions of it. However, this made it impossible for the bankers in Bangladesh to actually log on. So they started reporting, yeah, my computer's not working, password isn't working, I can't access anything. So then that gets to IT folks involved, and they have to figure out what the heck is going on. So, in other words, this is a really, really bad Monday for the Bangladesh bank folks.

Kara: 01:32:14

So it's like Yeah, that's really uh upsetting for them. That's a hot mess.

Ed: 01:32:19

Yeah, well, yeah, it's just it's a bad way to start the day, but they still have no idea the extent of what is really going on. So um the efforts from the German bank manage to um get a hold of someone at the Federal Reserve. I have a lot of typos here. I was also like super tired when typing this. Managed to a hold of someone in the Federal Reserve to give them a heads up, and subsequently, um, that American contacted or the contact tried to get a hold of the Bangladesh Bank, but again, nobody was in the office. So this was like Saturday. So they just left voicemail after voicemail and sent email after email. Um, so like when they eventually did get their computers working in the office, that's when they got the flood of messages in from the Federal Reserve, like, what in the hell is going on? Uh like everything has gone crazy. So the Federal Reserve noticed that around $81 million had made its way to the RCBC bank and tried to give them a heads up, right? By Monday, you know, the Americans are calling out RCBC and be like, hey, I think we've been we've been hacked, like, don't take any money, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it was Chinese New Year's and nobody was in the office.

unknown: 01:33:40

Oh man.

Ed: 01:33:43

So yeah, there's like a whole wide range of dumpster fires going on here.

Kara: 01:33:47

Yeah, everything's on fire right now. It's like in Spongebob, where it's in his brain, and they're like working in the office and everything's on fire. They're all in panic mode. It's like that.

Ed: 01:33:59

And and and there's like dumpster fires on both sides, both the good and the bad. Yep. You know, like the the hackers, they had their dumpster fire when somebody misspelled foundation. Yep. And like that one little thing, suddenly their dumpster fire caught on fire. And and and then, like, obviously, the Federal Reserve in Bangladesh, like they are discovering this attack. And keep in mind, whenever a company is being cyber attacked, minutes mean everything, right? As soon as the company finds out they've been hacked, they have minutes to react. And the longer that it takes, the more damage can take place. And so, like, the fact is, is that these hackers had access to all of this stuff for like three to four days, which is in in the world of cyber attacks, that is absolutely a worst-case scenario and absolutely devastating because that gives these guys a lot of time to do unbelievable amounts of damage and then cover everything up and leave absolutely no trace of anything and flat out disappear.

Kara: 01:35:14

Yeah.

Ed: 01:35:15

So, in fact, the money in the RCBC got deposited into the hackers' accounts. By the time Tuesday rolled around, the hackers had already withdrawn it. So, like when Tuesday rolled around and and the RCBC folks came in, they're like, What $81 million? Like, which show that it's it's gone. Like, and so then the Federal Reserve and Bangladesh is like, okay, so where did this $81 million go? And RCBC looked it up and they're like, oh, everything got sent to two casinos. By Monday, the hackers had done all the damage that they were that they could do, um, which was siphon out 81 million out of the 951 million, uh, which is a far cry from that lofty goal. However, 81 million dollars is still a good chunk of change. That's a lot of money.

Kara: 01:36:06

Yeah.

Ed: 01:36:07

I mean, I could do a lot with 81 million dollars if somebody gave it to me, not right steal it. So, and who knows how much more money they could have taken if somebody hadn't misspelled foundation.

Kara: 01:36:20

Yeah.

Ed: 01:36:21

That that that's uh and in the in cyber law and everything like that. This they bring this case up uh to really kind of like study it. It's a it's a really, really, really big case in terms of like the legalities of it, who's at fault. That you know, it's it's you you can look at this from many different professions and pull out a lesson from it, so to speak. So it just goes to show that one person's victory, uh yeah, one person's victory for uh via training and keeping a sharp eye can turn into a dumpster fire from somebody else. So this this whole incident taught me that dumpster fires go it can go both ways.

Kara: 01:37:05

Absolutely it can.

Ed: 01:37:06

It's just yep, it's not just good guys that have them, it's the bad guys too. And usually the bad guys are making dumpster fires for the good guys, and then the good guys are busting the bad guys and causing dumpster fires for them.

Kara: 01:37:20

Remember the uh assassination of Franz Ferdinand?

Ed: 01:37:24

Oh, jeez. Yeah, that was some of the most incompetent assassins known to mankind.

Kara: 01:37:36

Yet they still managed to start a world war.

Ed: 01:37:39

Yes, yeah, no, they work. Yeah, no, it's uh stupidity carried the day on that one.

Kara: 01:37:46

Uh yeah.

Ed: 01:37:46

So, however, 81 million is in chump change, and most people can live very comfortably on that amount. And it still goes down in history as the biggest bank heist. In one sitting, this is the most amount of money somebody has pulled out of a financial institution. Unless you're the Roman Empire, and then you can seize all of Europe in one day. Or the Ottomans or the Persians, or the Ottomans, who just they just started off with all of that.

Kara: 01:38:10

I was just saying, man, it's impressive.

Ed: 01:38:12

Like the Ottomans are weird, like that empire. Like you remember that map that we had or that timeline that showed like the world influence of different cultures?

Kara: 01:38:21

Yeah, it's behind me. It's not on the wall, but it's behind me.

Ed: 01:38:23

But I I love how like the Ottoman Empire just starts off as like this big blob and then it peters out over time. Whereas you look at the Roman Empire, it's like starts off small and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger over time, and then it goes, then it has its peak, and then it starts to peter up. Not the Ottomans, nope, they started off as like the number one superpower and then immediately started going downhill after that.

Kara: 01:38:46

Guaranteed there's a reason for that. I just don't remember what it is.

Ed: 01:38:49

Uh I think what it was is they inherited a ton of money from the Roman Empire and a ton of assets and a ton of everything. They just inherited it, and then I think as technology and ideas and everything progressed, it kind of chiseled away at that. Like they really didn't develop anything new, they were just living off the coattails of the Roman Empire.

Kara: 01:39:11

I feel like there's more to it than that. Uh well, I'm yeah yes.

Ed: 01:39:15

There's probably a PhD dissertation.

Kara: 01:39:18

Probably. I'm I'm not a historian of the ancient world, so I'm not sure, but yes.

Ed: 01:39:24

I'm a guy and I think about the Roman Empire at least five times every hour.

Kara: 01:39:28

Fair. That's why you keep bringing him up when I keep trying to say the Ottomans, though.

Ed: 01:39:38

Yeah, uh that time in history is interesting just because a lot of things did kind of like bleed into the next thing. It's not like a clear line, right? You can't just sit there and say, like, okay, well, today is the anniversary of the Roman Empire falling.

Kara: 01:39:54

Right?

Ed: 01:39:54

No, it happened over hundreds of years.

Kara: 01:39:58

Yes. Anyway, we're uh we're also getting off track. That was my fault. Sorry.

Ed: 01:40:01

Uh yeah, well, you keep getting me off track. You keep bringing up the Ottomans and the Romans and I'm just saying there's an argument there, and I really want to know what it is.

Kara: 01:40:12

It's gonna drive me insane.

Ed: 01:40:13

Oh, I know. And we could read hundreds of books on it and then we'll argue and find more arguments. Yeah, it's it's a rabbit hole.

Kara: 01:40:20

Yeah, it's a whole thing.

Ed: 01:40:21

Maybe that could be an episode.

Kara: 01:40:23

It could be, but first Ottoman dumpster fire. We need to get back to 2016.

Ed: 01:40:28

Yeah, let's get back to 2016 so we can go to bed and I can keep dreaming about the Romans. So basically, even though the hackers had their millions, they couldn't just take the money out of the RCBC and then start buying crap, right? It like I can't I can't sit there and steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and then just go buy a house. The banks want to know where that money came from, and that's how they catch people that are trying to buy money with or buy things with illegal money. Like, I sold a bunch of stock to buy my house. I had to show the banks every single stock that I inherited, how much was it worth when I inherited it, how much was it worth when my grandfather bought it in 1946, and how much did I sell it for, and then how many, how much taxes I paid? I had to supply all that information to the bank to show them like no, no, no, I didn't like get all this money by like selling drugs. And the only way you can get around that if you do have a crap ton of money, like you could have billions of dollars of illegal money and you can't do anything with it. And the only way you can get around that is by laundering it. Now, do you know what laundering is?

Kara: 01:41:43

I do. I can give you a very basic description of it.

Ed: 01:41:47

Okay, maybe you could give a quicker description of it for some of our folks in the audience who may not know.

Kara: 01:41:52

Essentially, you have dirty money, illegal money, and you put it through a business slowly, funnel it through, and then it comes out looking squeaky clean. That's why they call it laundering it.

Ed: 01:42:01

Well, that and the original intent was or the original strategy was that people would buy laundromats. Yeah, that too. Because you're you're paying with cash. Right. And then you just feed quarters and whatnot into these machines all day long, and yeah. So yeah, basically, you are funneling your money through a business, and then what comes out of it, you pay your taxes on it. And uh yeah, it's clear. It's like, nope, I made this money off of this business that I own.

Kara: 01:42:32

Yes, if you watch Breaking Bad, you know this.

Ed: 01:42:35

Yeah. Saul Goodman does an incredible like five, six-minute explainer to Skylar on how laundering works. It is, I I learned so much about that from that little scene. Oh, it's so great. But there's more than one way of laundering money because I'm pretty sure it would take a long time to funnel $81 million through a laundromat or a nail salon or whatever. They had to launder the money and to make it untraceable. And if this happened in America, they would have to make it so they could pay taxes on it. Um, remember, that's what did Al Caponin. It was tax fraud, not the hundreds of people that he had murdered.

Kara: 01:43:17

Prohibition. Last episode, go check it out.

Ed: 01:43:19

Yes. So the hackers went to large casinos in the Philippines. So they sent their money there. They took it of the RCBC bank and then they sent it to the Solaire Resort and Solar Resort and Casino and the Midas Casino. Now the hackers can't just show up with $81 million cash and suitcases and duffel bags. Instead, um they played the parts of whales or what we really call in America um high rollers. Um this is where a rich person can gamble like a crap ton of money at some casino, and like they don't have to bring in the cash. What they do is they call up the management and they're like, hey, I'm so-and-so. I have X millions of dollars that I am going to waste at your casino. Um, I'm gonna wire it over to your account, and then when I get there, I expect like a like a cash card that has access to all this money that I just wired over to the casino. This makes it so the rich dude can like he can withdraw chips, he can pay for his room. Like, that's how a lot of ultra wealthy people pay for pretty much anything, is they just create an account at wherever they want to buy millions of dollars of stuff from, especially like casinos, they just wire the money over, and there it sits until you show up and do what you want with it. That that so that way you don't have to walk around with all that cash. Cool. So hackers manage to get their money into a casino account, but that is still trackable, uh, because the casinos have to report on that, and they would have been on any number of the thousands of surveillance cameras located anywhere in the property. So, like, if you show up to a casino wearing a weird mask or whatever, you're gonna have security called on your butt in no time. So, like, these guys knew that they had a very limited amount of time to launder this money and not lose it all in gambling in the process, right? So the hackers rented at what is known as a junket. A junket is like a private gambling room. So let's say, like you, me, my wife, your husband, let's say that four of us just wanted to play poker, but we didn't want to have to deal with waitresses or onlookers or security guards or whatever, and we had millions of dollars to throw into this poker game, we could rent a junket, and then like these junkets are like an enclosed room away from everything. In fact, these rooms are so in like separate from the rest of the casino that they even use their own separate chips. Like, you can't take chips in from outside, and you can't take chips out from the junket. So I actually seen something like this in Reno. Uh, I was staying um at a hotel uh or a casino up there, and I saw one of these junkets, and there was like four or five really, really old dudes that were just playing poker, and I kind of just stood outside this room watching in and listening to their conversations. It turns out these were the owners of a majority of the casinos in Reno. And like every Saturday they get together, and each one of them brings a couple million dollars to gamble on some poker, and like the chips that they had were made out of like crystal, so like they look completely different. They got like these giant tiles um that were worth like hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, and yeah, like one guy was like, Well, I'm all in, it's getting late. He lost a hand, so he lost like two and a half million dollars, and he's like, Alright, guys, well, I'm tired, I'm calling it a night. Uh, same time, same place next week. Oh, yeah, sure, Phil. See you later. Have a good night. I'm like, can I just have one of those chips? Like, it was just like you just threw away two and a half million dollars like that. That's a junket. Okay, so the game that these guys decided to play, because you can play like Black Jack, where you you will lose everything. You don't want to play like five-card draw because it's player against player. Instead, you want to play a game where it is the players against the house. Yeah. And a game like that is back or at. And these hackers purposely chose back a rat because in the short term you're gonna lose a ton of money. However, though, over the long term or the course of hours and hours and hours, you'll actually make back about 90% of the money that you lost to the house. So if you walk in there with $81 million over the course of hours, uh, you could expect to walk away with like $70 to $73 million.

Kara: 01:48:21

Okay.

Ed: 01:48:22

Now it's laundered.

Kara: 01:48:23

Yeah.

Ed: 01:48:24

Right? Because it changed hands to the casino, and then you won it back. And now it's completely untraceable. Now these hackers, they they have their money. Um, and so by the middle of February 2016, the hackers associated with the largest bank heist in history, they just vanished. To this day, we don't know who these men were. We have no idea what they look like. They cashed out their millions of dollars at the at the casinos and they were gone. So who like what was behind all this? Like, what country instigated all this? Because of the investigation, they they did figure out like the responsible country for this because this did behave in a very strange fashion. Investigators managed to track down one Chinese dude who worked at the RCBC Bank and was able to, and this dude was able to help the hackers with their accounts and getting their money out in time, because time was short. However, he took his millions, so he got a cut out of that 80 million dollars. He took his millions of dollars and then absolutely disappeared without a trace. And we still don't know whatever happened to this guy.

Kara: 01:49:40

In this day and age, that's actually really impressive.

Ed: 01:49:43

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Now he was Chinese, and China will not extradite their own. So more than likely, he's living nicely in you know, the backcountry of China. And uh yeah, there's nothing anybody can do to to get to them or anything. As for the hackers, researchers, investigators are able to figure some things out. The nature of the tactics strategies used and other crimes of this sort, and the software used to infiltrate the banks or the Bangladesh Bank's computers, all pointed to North Korea.

Kara: 01:50:19

It was one of two options.

Ed: 01:50:21

Yeah.

Kara: 01:50:23

Generally.

Ed: 01:50:25

Yeah, it's always gonna be North Korea, and what's the other country?

Kara: 01:50:28

Russia.

Ed: 01:50:28

Oh yeah, Russia is real big on that. But Russia doesn't hack, like they don't do bank heists.

Kara: 01:50:33

Not as much, no. They hack other things.

Ed: 01:50:35

No, they they they steal uh they steal like intellectual property, they want to steal patents and technology.

Kara: 01:50:42

Yeah, North Korea is crazy. They have like a whole workforce of people just doing that.

Ed: 01:50:46

Yes. In fact, it's called Bureau 121.

Kara: 01:50:49

Got it. There's a name for it now, I know. Oh, it's new every day.

Ed: 01:50:53

Yep. So by now it's pretty much confirmed that the hackers who performed this heist worked for North Korea in a special department called Bureau 121. This is a department that primarily spies on its own people because the North Korea of it all. North Korea. But also performs cyber warfare all over the world. Since there have been so many sanctions put on North Korea over the years due to their refusal to step back from nuclear bomb research, uh, the already poor country can't import or export much as a result. Therefore, North Korea created this hacker group to basically steal money from other countries and entities so that they can, you know, keep up with their nuclear arms RD. Uh, pretty sure they don't use any of that money to feed its population, especially when you look at the at their democratically elected supreme leader size.

Kara: 01:51:52

Quote unquote.

Ed: 01:51:53

I think he gets the majority of the food. Meanwhile, the rest of North Korea is starving. And like everybody, they're like, okay, we can't America just can't go in and just hijack these hackers. Right? That would be like an act of war. So unfortunately, North Korea gets away with a lot. Uh, thankfully, the amount of money they do steal doesn't seem to really hurt a nation because they target like America or Britain or other financially sound established economies. And you know, $81 million is a drop in the bucket to America. So it's like fine, whatever, North Korea, just uh whatever. You just take it. You know, like we're so tired of hearing about all their threats and all that crap. All things considered, this department um would be super cheap to run. You don't need supercomputers, you don't need expensive equipment. All you need really is just an internet connection. And since North Korea is a democratic dictatorial prison state, they don't have to pay their hackers anything, right? They can just sit there and say, well, either you do this or we shoot you. Yeah. Well, I like being alive, so I'm gonna do these hacks, which is what I mentioned way up at the beginning. Like, these guys probably didn't have a choice. Yeah, uh, this is probably something they were assigned to do. Um, my guess is they did everything out of North Korea because we have no idea what they look like. Um, we have no idea anything about these guys, so so yeah. Makes sense, yeah, yeah, it makes sense for North Korea to do it. And they've done a lot of other insane hacks, like they hack Sony over a movie. Yeah, it's uh it's crazy what North Korea has done. So the group is known across the world as hacker group of Bureau 121. It is known as the Lazarus Group, and they have made a name for themselves as effective hackers in the cyber warfare scene, and there is no telling what they would have done uh in total and what they have planned to do next. We just don't know the extent of what these guys are up to. Lastly, Dr. Achir Top Rahman, who was in charge of the Bangladesh Bank, resigned in March and taking full responsibility for all the security failures. So, conclusion. In conclusion, every English teacher hates that phrase. Uh, to this day, the Bangladesh Bank Heist is a textbook example of how planning, creativity, and simply thinking ahead can lead to success. Granted, it was a success of these hackers, but hey, success is measurable. Doesn't care who has the success, but yeah, it's measurable. It also shows that it can go the other way, right? So dumpster fires live in the world of crime as they well as well as they do in everyday lives. One simple misspelled word did it did in a year's work, right? That that's all it took to light that fire. On the other hand, banks and the Swiss system spent years and even decades trying to make the most secure banking system out there, and it still got hacked, right? It's just a fact of life. No matter how hard you try to protect yourself, if someone wants to get you or get something from you bad enough, they will achieve it. What happens afterward is up to you and what you gained from that experience and what you what you plan to do with it. It's like a lesson learned. And that is uh the Bangladesh uh bank heist of 2016.

Kara: 01:55:44

Very nice, I guess.

Ed: 01:55:50

Vastly different episode than what we've done recently.

Kara: 01:55:54

That's okay. Mix it up, spice it up a little bit.

Ed: 01:55:57

Hopefully, I I present it. I'm a little rusty on my presentation because I haven't had to host an episode in like six weeks, eight weeks.

Kara: 01:56:06

I know, I'm hogging it. I'm sorry.

Ed: 01:56:08

No, it's fine. No, it's good stuff. Um in this approach, I tried taking a slightly different way of trying to tell this more like a story um rather than just explaining engineering terms. So that was good. Time will tell if I did this okay.

Kara: 01:56:26

I thought it was I was engaged.

Ed: 01:56:28

Yes, well, I think the cup of coffee helped too.

Kara: 01:56:31

Always.

Ed: 01:56:34

So yeah, that's the bankeist. Um we uh we hope you guys keep listening. Uh check out our website, thedaystemps to fire.com, um, where our uh Miss Kara is always updating it, adding more stuff. Um, I keep coming in after the fact, I put more and more links, like especially like on our previous website or websites, our previous episodes. I may produce a or Kara could produce a website and get it published that may also be beneficial if you or support episode 12, right? So like I'm constantly going in there and I'm always updating links and putting more cross-reference stuff in there. Um Kara, it's been a minute since you put some of your artwork up there. So if you can I'm in school now. Yeah, with all your unlimited time.

Kara: 01:57:31

Ain't nobody got time for that.

Ed: 01:57:33

Well, make time, it's not hard.

Kara: 01:57:34

Well, you want me to do episodes or not? I'm already I'm already working on one.

unknown: 01:57:40

All right.

Ed: 01:57:41

Well, technically you got a little bit of reprieve because I uh I'll I'll I'll work on the next one or so. Um just to give you a break because yeah, you you you done like what eight episodes? Like dang you're in a row.

Kara: 01:57:55

I guess, huh? There was only like one or two between.

Ed: 01:57:58

You think about Prohibition and then the Great Depression.

Kara: 01:58:01

Yeah, that's eight right there.

Ed: 01:58:03

And then I yeah, and then I had uh Deep Water Horizon in between.

Kara: 01:58:07

It was two.

Ed: 01:58:08

Yeah.

Kara: 01:58:09

I'm okay with it.

Ed: 01:58:10

So yeah, like the past ten episodes, eight of them have been you honestly.

Kara: 01:58:14

It feels weird when I don't have an episode to work on. So even though you've yeah, it's fine.

Ed: 01:58:20

You know, it was kind of weird me putting this one together. I'm like, man, what do I do again? Because I do all the editing and and all that kind of stuff, so I do all the like the producing stuff. So in case somebody wants to know out there, I'm like the executive producer, and Kara is like the executive writer. I like it, which is strange because I'm in the middle of writing like two books in and all that. But producers can write too.

unknown: 01:58:43

Yeah.

Ed: 01:58:44

And I'm the I'm the English teacher.

unknown: 01:58:46

Yeah.

Ed: 01:58:46

But you're the creative type, so you should be the one doing all the editing and making the episodes pretty, and but I think you would hate that.

Kara: 01:58:54

Yeah, I'm not one for the digital space.

Ed: 01:58:58

So yeah, uh, be sure to check out our Instagram feed. Uh that gets updated periodically. Um, be sure to tell your friends and family. Um, if you're a student listening to this, hey, let your teacher know that you know a really cool history podcast. Um, doesn't really matter the grade level as long as you understand it. But yeah, let your teachers know. Uh announce it to your class. Like, I actually have your teacher listen to it and then have your teacher announce it to the class. Like, I feel like we do enough research here that that we can really help you out, uh, given whatever it is that you're studying in your class. And then, of course, just uh if you if you know anybody that's kind of having a tough time, you know, somebody who felt like they've really messed something up in their lives or they made a really, really bad mistake, send them over to this show because we will show them that there are people that have made way worse mistakes in the past, and most of them do okay. We'll figure it out. Yep, you figure it out, and those mistakes happened in the past so that we can learn from them and take a great deal of solace knowing that hey, we didn't we're we're not screwing up as as much as as we think. So, any announcements on your end before we close this out?

Kara: 02:00:17

Um I'm going medieval this next episode that I'm doing. So look out for that. It's a good one. I'm excited about it. Medieval France.

Ed: 02:00:27

Yeah, that that's that's your wheelhouse right there, is the medieval stuff.

Kara: 02:00:30

I do like the medieval history because it's funny.

Ed: 02:00:34

I I I want to do a science-y one, but I want to do something that's kind of funny. Like we'll workshop it. Maybe the time when America thought it'd be cool to tape little napalm bombs on bats.

Kara: 02:00:47

Oh, yeah, you've been talking about that one for a while.

Ed: 02:00:50

I need I may I may do that one. I just gotta figure out how to make it into a full episode. Uh, because the outcome of that is hilarious. It's like it's such the American way to screw something up.

Kara: 02:01:00

And with that, friends, we're gonna end the episode so uh we can go to bed.

Ed: 02:01:04

That is right.

Kara: 02:01:05

And you can hit stop.

Ed: 02:01:06

Yes. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for listening in. And uh yeah, we'll catch you on the next one.

unknown: 02:01:14

Bye.