Ding and Gao, were eventually found to be responsible
for setting up the fake RCBC accounts in the Philippines. They turned out to be
just middlemen. But, they were still a crucial part of the operation. And,
investigators hoped questioning them would lead to the true culprits. Unfortunately,
before the Bangladesh authorities were able to apprehend them, they left the country,
Boarding flights to Macau, a special administrative region of China where it was then
impossible to track them. And so, with the remaining four transfers, the hackers were
able to net $81 million. Not quite the original sum, but still enough, by some metrics,
to be considered the single biggest bank heist in history. Now, despite the attackers
best efforts at removing evidence from the bank's systems, cybersecurity experts were
still able to analyze the malware. What they found were similarities in the techniques
and tools used between the Bangladesh Bank heist and many other cyber attacks on financial
institutions around the world. Which means that this one particular group had very
likely been responsible for a series of global attacks.