Bangladesh Bank robbery
heist via the SWIFT network from a Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
The Bangladesh Bank robbery, also known colloquially as the Bangladesh Bank cyber heist, was a theft that took place in February 2016. Thirty-five fraudulent instructions were issued by security hackers via the SWIFT network to illegally transfer close to US$1 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York account belonging to Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of Bangladesh. Five of the thirty-five fraudulent instructions were successful in transferring US$101 million, with US$81 million traced to the Philippines and US$20 million to Sri Lanka. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York blocked the remaining thirty transactions, amounting to US$850 million, due to suspicions raised by a misspelled instruction. As of 2025, only US$15 million out of US$81 million transferred to the Philippines has been recovered with little progress in recovering the remaining US$66 million, and all the money transferred to Sri Lanka has since been recovered. Most of the money transferred to the Philippines went to four personal accounts, held by single individuals, and not to companies or corporations.
Background
Like many other national banks, Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of Bangladesh, maintains an account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to deposit, maintain, and transfer foreign currency reserve of Bangladesh. The foreign currency reserve of Bangladesh, a growing economy, often reaches multiple billions of US dollars. As of September 2020, Bangladesh has a foreign currency reserve of US$39 billion. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network is used to communicate with the bank holding the foreign exchange account in order to withdraw, transfer, or deposit the currency.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bangladesh Bank robbery” is heist via the SWIFT network from a Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bangladesh, Bank and robbery, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “heist via the SWIFT network from a Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23048209. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2025 and 2020.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Bangladesh Bank robbery primary sources, Bangladesh Bank robbery archive and Bangladesh research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Bangladesh Bank robbery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.