How IT Experts Steal Billions From Financial Institutions

Most of them are quiet, sometimes even shy and definitely the go-to-guys in most organizations, but emerging evidence suggests that Information Technology experts could be some of the most dangerous people in the office.

An information technology specialist was yesterday arraigned in court and charged on four counts, stealing over Sh21 million from two banks -Housing Finance Company of Kenya and Diamond Trust Bank.

Another tech savvy suspect Dancan Gacheru was in May, accused of stealing Sh28 million by his employer, Equity Bank, in what was considered one of the largest frauds orchestrated by an employee in the Kenyan banking sector.

In January this year, two suspects, Alex Mutungi Mutuku and Mr Stanley Kimeu Mutua were arraigned in court and charged with hacking into NIC Bank's database and obtaining confidential customer information for which they demanded ransom equivalent to Sh6.2 million.

It is alleged that they threatened to make the information public, if the bank didn’t pay the money, which they wanted in form of bitcoin (a form of virtual currency traded online that has at times been used by criminals to launder illicit funds).

These are just but a few cases that highlight what is turning out to be one of the least understood forms of crime targeting financial institutions such as banks.

Banking executives in Kenya are losing billions of shillings every year to fraudsters who take advantage of the fact that intricate Information Technology is a preserve of a few in the country.

While hacking and other IT related crimes have been some of the biggest nightmares in developed countries, it is a relatively new problemand a serious cause for concern in Kenya.

Disturbingly, most of the crimes are committed by young people working in financial institions like the banks.

Some of the mechanisms being employed to curb the problem of financial crimes include segregation of duties and job rotation,

Most financial institutions have also embraced internal audits to detect crimes.

Kenya has become one of the few countries in Africa to adapt to EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) which is a global security standard, to enhance card security and curb fraud, used by most developed countries to enhance fraud mitigation systems.

  • . . . .