Postbank Hit With R90 Million Hack
During two weeks last October thieves made off with R90 Million from Postbank in what some are saying is an inside job.
Reports of the massive theft are only now surfacing as Postbank has been forced to submit some figures to the authorities and government.
The scheme involved loading up grant beneficiary’s accounts with massive amounts and then draining the cash at ATMs with cloned SASSA cards. Take a moment and give some thought to how long it takes to drain R90 million in small enough amounts so as to avoid detection. Apparently, that takes 2 weeks.
‘The theft was only discovered, almost by accident’
The theft was only discovered, almost by accident, when a staff member grew curious about how one SASSA grant beneficiary ended up with R100 000 in their account. That lead to further investigation which revealed the scope of the theft.
Once discovered the culprits (who then knew they had been discovered ..cough, inside job cough) stopped drawing funds and spent the next 6 days wiping out records of what they had done while investigators simultaneously tried to find information on the bank’s systems.
Postbank has since been able to recover funds and claim insurance to the tune of around R80 Million. They have thus far downplayed the incident and been quick to say that it was the bank’s money and not grant recipients’ funds.
