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A man who got away with $242M using ‘black magic’
- notahacker 9y agoLooking forward to his ICO
- raesene9 9y agoAnd this kind of thing is why banks are meant to have rigorous segregation of duties and audit regimes, lots of money is a dreadful temptation.
- pjc50 9y agoThe "send me your money and I'll send double back" scam is a staple among kids playing MMOs since at least the days of Runescape. Doubtless it goes a lot further back.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoHow does this work exactly? I can see how it works in the short term e.g. you give me money, I give you double, you give me lots of money and I disappear with it. But it seems he had an ongoing relationship with the Daubi bank manager, how is that possible?
- giarc 9y agoI think it comes back to the part in the beginning where the article says that blackmagic is forbidden but there is a strong belief in it.
- saalweachter 9y agoAt some point you also have good old fashioned blackmail. Once the mark has been tricked into giving away a small sum, you can now hold it over their head as blackmail to give you a larger sum - they are as fired/going-to-jail after giving away $X as for $10X, so with the stick of telling their bosses what they've done and the carrot of "maybe I can get you out of this if you give me a little more", the con artist can keep coming back to the same victim over and over.
- JackFr 9y agoOr he was stealing in conspiracy with Sissoko and is lying about it now.
- jan_g 9y ago... Mohammed Ayoub had claimed at his trial that Sissoko had put him under a spell ... Mr. Ayoub is the person working at Dubai bank. So, I'd guess some form of social engineering, where Sissoko had been convincing enough to repeatedly make Mr. Ayoub wire money to different accounts around the world.
- JackFr 9y agoOr he's lying. Or maybe there were a bunch of them stealing and Sissoko was laundering for them and Ayoub was the designated fall guy, and this was the best lie the group could come up with.
- samfriedman 9y agoI'm sure he had no trouble doubling smaller sums (the article stated he also had significant debts), and made up stories about how it would take longer and be more complicated to double larger sums. Going back to MMOs, scammers in EVE have a jumble of variants on this scam. Typically they'll double your money if it's below a certain amount, but run away with any larger sums. Sometimes they frame the game as a lottery or game of skill: only the first person whose cash transfer shows up in their wallet will have their money doubled. With arbitrary rules like that, it's easier to give excuses as to why they weren't able to double the money. Oh, you didn't read the fine print in my bio: better luck next time! A good rube might fork over multiple donations before he realizes his money won't be coming back. Of course, scamming in that game is perfectly legal, so it's a lot easier to just block and ignore your marks.
- olivermarks 9y agohypnotism?
- JackFr 9y agoBecause they're all lying. At least one guy in Dubai (but most likely more) were stealing and at least one guy from Mali was laundering. When someone got caught, that was the best lie they could come up with.
- lotophage 9y agoSissoko did this in 1995, which predates Runescape. It's essentially a Ponzi scheme, variations of which are mentioned as far back as the 1800s. I suspect that they are even older than that.
- Jedd 9y ago> It's rumoured he was also forced to undergo an exorcism, to cure him of his belief in black magic. In a culture of woo, this doubtless makes some kind of sense.
- barrkel 9y agoWe all live in cultures of woo, we just can't see the woo from the inside. Cf. ICOs, irrational exuberance, etc.
- ta2987 9y agoYes, yes, everything is the same.
- logfromblammo 9y agoI like my woo to come with auditable history and objectively measurable data. Then you can get a brand new story every time there is a contradiction.
- hutzlibu 9y agoVery interesting story, but disappointing interview with the man in the end. Why didn't she asked him, how he made his money, when he declined, that he was responsible for the theft?
- protopeer 9y agoyeah, i was really keen to find out how he managed to be "worth $400m at one point", prior to the theft.
- koolba 9y agoThis guy sounds awesome. If there are any aspiring screenwriters out there this would make a great movie. Think Catch Me If You Can but more modern and international.
- batmenace 9y agoFor some reason, reading this I had to think of the old movie "Brewster's Millions", as if this guy, too, had to get rid of all the money.
- spraak 9y agoAnd the Disney movie "Blank Check"
- BlackFly 9y agoThe picture of him smiling with the Miami school band makes me incredibly happy. Look at their smiles. Those are infectious smiles.
- stevenh 9y agoYou're proudly declaring how easily you are manipulated.
- Broken_Hippo 9y agoAnd you, your low opinion of others.
- shortoncash 9y agoAnd cast Eddie Murphy as Sissoko.
- michaelmwangi 9y agoHaha yep he would fit perfectly!
- 9y ago
- firasd 9y agoReminds me of a great (now-deleted) tweet I saw a few years ago: "Everything is legal if you scale it up." Convert the cash to assets, then convert the assets to political clout---at that point the cash heist is in the rear-view mirror...
- matte_black 9y agoIt will catch up to you in the end.
- firasd 9y agoThe examples that came to my mind when I first saw that tweet were: Napster/Youtube (unauthorized content sharing scaled up to such a degree that the media industry had to shift to streaming business models), Uber, the ongoing US legalization of marijuana (too much of the population uses it for abolition to be effective).
- troels 9y ago> He would give away money, but … to my knowledge it was never done in a way that he didn't get publicity for it. Well. That's a bit of a circular argument.
- taoistextremist 9y agoI don't think so. He could have given away money in a more discreet fashion and it would be evident that he did so and not have been for publicity.
- tmnvix 9y agoMaybe he did and they were unaware of it (n.b. this is the circular argument).
- lawlessone 9y ago>"He walked into Citibank one day, no appointment, met a teller and he ended up marrying her," This guy is smooth.
- imjk 9y agoI assume if she was a teller and saw, say $100MM, in an account assigned to him, it wouldn't be unimaginable for her to believe whatever story he conjures up.
- makkesk8 9y agoI truly see a good movie to be made here.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoI'd love to see this. Who could play the man?
- cestith 9y agoIdris Elba? Shemar Moore? Arinzé Kene? Donald Glover? Ron Funches? Michael B. Jordan? Morris Chestnut? How's the drama/comedy split on this one? Denzel Washington might be a little old for his earlier exploits, but don't count him out.
- ztoben 9y agoOkay, someone help me follow this. I understand the whole give me money and I'll double it thing. But how did he end up with $242 million? That seems like and incredible amount for a single person to have the authority to give away.
- firasd 9y agoDid some googling and based on this legal judgment it seems like his relationship with the woman at Citibank really helped in making withdrawals from the Dubai Islamic Bank https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2504755/dubai-islamic-bank-v-citibank-na/ https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2504755/dubai-islamic-... Also found this article from '98 where a coworker asks the same thing and gets the same answer Ayyoub gave other people: "I asked how he had transferred so much money without approval or authorization," Salim later recalled. "Ayyoub said he had been under the influence of, or pressured by, the rich man to transfer the money." http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/babas-big-bucks-6359873 http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/babas-big-bucks-6359873 Also, this 2001 article suggests the transfers "were disguised in falsified bank ledgers" http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/jail-sentences-dropped-in-islamic-bank-embezzlement-case-1.422297 http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/jail-sentences-dropped-...
- samstave 9y agoGiven the current state of computers and surveillance, It would seem that we dont know anything about the simplicity required to pull off mass heists in the age prior to computers-in-their-current-form.... It would seem that it was REALLY easy to rob banks in the past. I wonder what Dillenger's actual networth would have been...
- dfox 9y agoAmerican (and thus international) banking seems to work on the somehow backwads principle of allowing allmost any transaction without any real authorization (eg. credits cards, direct debits, checks and such, where only thing you really need to know for the transaction to happen is some semi-public number) and dealing with possible issues after the fact On the other hand the system is pretty good at finding the party responsible, or in other words whose insurance will be billed for the missing money (for example when you look at it from this PoV the EMV protocols and cryptography used make sense). But for that to work someone has to be actually looking for the issues.
- roadbeats 9y agoHe should do an ICO and get back to the game
- kylell 9y agoStill the writer is telling the story as an absolute truth, if he claimed could double money, why that guy kept sending him money without getting back anything doubled? And 3 years, the sentences, way to little, something doesn't add up, I'm inclined to believe that he actually was some kind of scapegoat, that yes he received money from the bank, but a cover up, also the bank didn't noticed, so much money going out without justification?
- Kiro 9y agoYeah, I was really hoping the article would explain more.
- dkersten 9y agoI assumed he was giving back doubled amounts at a small scale using borrowed money or whatever, then when he got a large sum he ran. But even if that’s what he did, I don’t know how he jumped from small amounts he could borrow to $242 million. I guess we will never know for sure how he did it.
- Quarrelsome 9y agomoney doubling is a tried and tested scam. They used to do it a lot in EVE Online. You don't just have one mark and that's how it worked. Likely he was doing lots of money doubling with others that was feeding this one to finally get the $200 million. Its possible he even transitioned this particular mark into a different scam where he just got direct access to their funds and was able to sign stuff off without authorization.
- eccbits 9y agoWhen I saw the title I thought it was about a cryptocurrency
- kazinator 9y ago"I have magic powers to double your money" is exactly the sort of banks use to promote their mutual funds and whatnot.
- justherefortart 9y agoYou should see what the Vatican has done with people's donations. Gorgeous city!
- Terretta 9y agoTook them a while.
- gnode 9y agoSounds like typical ICO marketing.
- vkou 9y agoI've never had a bank promote their mutual funds to me that way.
- happy-go-lucky 9y agoCoincidentally, on the BBC News is Nirav Modi: Who is India's scandal-linked billionaire? http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43081499 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43081499 > Then this week, the same bank publicly alleged that the jeweller was among those involved in an alleged $1.8bn fraud - which has led to fears for India's second-largest state-run bank.
- jacquesm 9y ago> Sissoko has never faced justice. In his absence, a Dubai court sentenced him to three years for fraud and practis[sic]ing magic. Well that's good. We really can't have people going around practicing magic, who knows what could come of it.
- peeters 9y ago> practis[sic]ing magic. You don't need to add [sic] when it's correct (this is a British news site).
- c22 9y agoSic doesn't mean "incorrect", it means "as written". You use it anytime a reader might be confused to show that you haven't made a mistake while quoting someone which could potentially change the meaning or context of the quote.
- bllguo 9y agoOTOH, doesn't the [sic] come after the word? Never seen it like this.
- panopticon 9y agoYeah, putting it in the middle of a word is very odd.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JackFr 9y agoThere's no black magic, there is a conspiracy to steal and launder money, a bank that wants to hide the problem, complicit courts and credulous western reporters who will literally believe anything.
- shubb 9y agoThe statement that signing off the transfers wasn't the work of one man is probably accurate. So, what was this? Was Sissoko acting as a mule for getting money out of the bank and transferring it to other places? One way to launder money is to buy things after all. Luxury goods like food, wine and art are particularly good for this. If I need to give you $1000 with plausible deniability, then if I go to your restaurant and pay $1000 for a $50 meal, that does the job. So, someone wanted to quietly move millions of dollars out of a bank, and then gave it to someone who possibly laundered it, and did things like running and airline and buying military helicopters (what other military hardware was he not caught buying?). Then the US diplomatic system went to bat for him in court. Black magic or black budget? (Edit: the spies angle is probably a bit of a push, but I think speculating he was laundering for a bigger fish isn't)
- acobster 9y agoI find it much more plausible that Ayoub, the bank agent, simply took the fall for a handful of other people who were also conned. The more elaborate explanations smack of mistaking ignorance for malice.
- gumby 9y agoThis article would have been better had they used pictures of Dubai from the 1990s when it was still a backwater.
- rajacombinator 9y agoFascinating story but disappointing uninterested article.