Moronic UK hacker exploits CYBG loophole to steal £100,000
“We take fraud very seriously…” Wow! Who knew?
A British hacker/moron has been jailed for the theft of nearly £100,000 from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group (CYBG) by exploiting a bug in its online banking system.
According to the BBC, 24-year-old James Ejankowski defrauded the bank of more than £99,000 in December 2016. He spent the money on a BMW, a Range Rover and (badly designed) tattoos for his face.
Ejankowski lied to his family that he had won the money on a scratchcard, according to the prosecutor.
He found out that if he used the bank’s online banking software to transfer notional funds between his current account and his savings account between midnight and 01:00, the transaction would work and the bank would not find out. Well, it eventually did find out.
“For one hour there was a credit balance in his account even though he did not have any money,” Prosecutor Shaun Dryden told Teesside Crown Court, according to the Teesside Evening Gazette.
Like a Mills & Boon romance novel gone terribly wrong, Ejankowski used his partner Charlotte Slater’s NatWest account to funnel £53,399. The BBC says in addition to making purchases for himself, Ejankowski, who is unemployed, also used the money to pay off debts and to give £2,000 to his aunt and £1,362 to his father-in-law.
Four weeks after he began stealing the funds, he turned himself in to the police on Boxing Day and made a full admission of guilt, saying he only had £40 left.
The bank has so far been able to recover £34,000.
Ejankowski has been sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment for fraud. Slater received a suspended sentence over her supporting role in the crime.
According to the BBC, Ejankowski was previously convicted in May 2015 for seven offences of fraud over selling items on the internet. He received a community service punishment of 200 hours of unpaid work, which was later replaced by a curfew.
Good to see the British justice system is as useless as ever.
A Clydesdale Bank spokesperson told the BBC: “This was a one-off isolated incident. We take fraud very seriously and note the court’s decision.”
The last sentence in that CYBG quote is so utterly pointless. And we all thought you laughed at fraud and couldn’t care less.
