When this story first broke, those who commented reckoned it would be very difficult for them to shift the cash.
It's now reported that they've fled the country with NZ$ 2.3 million of the NZ$ 10 million that was erroneously credited to their account - what the public wants to know (or me at least) is how on earth did they do it?
Saturday 23 May 2009
So how did they do it then?
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4 comments:
Yes I certainly want to know
When I was in New Zealand having more than 1500 dollars in cash on you was suspicious
They could have asked for a bankers draft I guess? But surely the bank would notice that amount of money
This is very strange Very strange indeed
I think the gambling method would be best. Fly to Vegas asap, use your debit card to fund the gambling. If you bought a few hundred K in chips, gamble the lot, playing blackjack say, you'd be left with probably half in winnings, possibly more. Take that in chips, and cash out into dollars. Bingo. I reckon in a few days you could recycle a few million easily. You can play $1000 per hand blackjack at most casinos. I expect after a while of that if you asked you could play for even bigger stakes.
If the card issuer's authentication system was up to snuff it should spot changes of usage pattern and throw it up for review / manual approval.
I think I'd wager a modest £ or two that the most likely explanation is an inside job; someone inside "helped" with the mistake, and helped them get the money out. Most countries cooperate on money laundering checks these days so opening a bank account abroad is difficult and time consuming; you'd have to know which countries to go to to have one opened in advance without thorough ML checks. And AFAIK there isn't one near NZ.
Wondered about buying gold - NZ$2.4m is near as dammit US$1.5m so at $900 a (Troy) oz it's 52 kilos. Probably wouldn't work because gold purchases like that would likely be notifiable..... might raise a few eyebrows.
Nahh. Maybe risk a fiver on an inside assist:-)
S, you'd still need to be able to withdraw enough to buy the chips to start off with.
FT, that must be the correct answer, which takes all the fun out of it.
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