Barclays Bank Cyber Theft: Eight Arrested Over £1.3m(N257.632Million) Theft

British police say they have arrested eight men on suspicion of stealing 1.3 million pounds ($2 million) from a Barclays Bank branch by tapping into its computers.

The money was transferred from the branch in Swiss Cottage in north London in April, a Met Police spokesman said.

Police said Friday that cash, drugs, jewels and thousands of credit cards have been found in searches at addresses around London.

The men, aged between 24 and 47, are being questioned about conspiracy to steal and conspiracy to defraud U.K. banks.

The arrests follow a failed attempt to use similar technology to rob the Santander bank last week.

Police say that in both cases a gang member posed as an engineer and installed devices on the bank’s computers.

Four men have appeared in court charged with attempting to take control of computers at a Santander branch in Surrey Quays, south-east London.

Det Supt Terry Wilson said the Barclays investigation was being carried out by the same police team.

He said: “This was a highly-organised criminal network with each individual filling a specific role.

“All criminal networks have a head and we very much believe we have now apprehended our ‘Mr Big’ as part of this operation.”

Following the report of the theft, police found a “keyboard video mouse” (KVM) switch which has a 3G router was attached to one of the branch’s computers. This allows a user to control multiple computers. This enabled the gang to remotely transfer funds to other back accounts.

It had had been placed there by a man purporting to be an IT engineer the day before the theft on 5 April.

Barclays said it was able to recover a “significant amount” of the stolen money.

One central London premises which has been searched was described by detectives as the “control” centre for the fraudsters.

“Those responsible are significant players within a sophisticated and determined organised criminal network, who used considerable technical abilities and traditional criminal know-how to infiltrate and exploit secure banking systems,” Det Insp Mark Raymond of the Met’s Central e-Crime Unit said.

Alex Grant from Barclays said: “Barclays has no higher priority than the protection and security of our customers against the actions of would-be fraudsters.

“We identified the fraud and acted swiftly to recover funds on the same day. We can confirm that no customers suffered financial loss as a result of this action”, he added.