Unexpected chat at BNT financial meeting reveals Hacking Incident

Back BEFORE BNT even owned My Second Bank, I personally had 1.2 million L$ on deposit there. Thor Columbia and his partner, Charles Granville, and I agreed to merge M2B into BNT. Charles assured us that the banks software, which he developed, was the best and most secure in SL.

Come to find out, when we completed the merger, that my personal balance mysteriously dropped to 1000 L$. At the same time, some woman was claiming to have 1.2 million in the bank she wanted to withdraw, etc etc. She apparently transferred those funds to another avatar, and finally transferred the funds to two more avatars, each of whome tried to get the money out of the bank, and demanding service.

Apparently they had used a scripted object named "IntLibber Brautigan" to transfer funds out of my account into the first avatar claiming that sum. The initial reason I suspected them to be fraudsters was that at the time of the takeover, I was the largest depositor in M2B, so someone claiming to have similar deposits was not possible.

At the time we assumed they were honest customers, we had no evidence otherwise because Charles had taken the bank's database offline in a strike over how much shares in BNT he was getting in the deal, and thereafter was hard to get ahold of and very cagey about the banks transaction records, which were impossible to find by someone unfamiliar with the system (i.e. they were not stored in a typical mysql table).

We tried our best to make things right, even transferred a sim to them as a means of withdrawal of large sums. Once we hired our own database expert to take a look at things, in October, after we had gotten fed up with Charles' obstructions and evasions (meanwhile he had sold half his stock in BNT on Capex and laundered the money to his Charles Gantenbein alt, which he used to daytrade BNT while his compatriots trashed BNT in the capex forums to fake up volatility, all while the Capex officials stood by and did nothing, which in RL constitutes serious securities law breaches, its a good thing Arb considers his exchange a "game") we figured things out.

We finally figured out what had happened, the morning after the two brazillian avatars used a account transfer/close hack to violate the banks withdrawal limits in order to drain bank reserves. It was at this time we'd had enough with the old bank system and took the ATMs offline.

We then paid a considerable sum for the AVIX software, which, while its owner had a shady reputation, the software itself is solid as a rock, because its developer, Unoti Quonset of Tango11 Communications, is a man of integrity with programming talents to match. This software was used both for ACE and BNTF separately to prevent comingling.

I should note also that Charles Granville, on Oct 30th, hacked my SL account (LL notified me of this) in order to steal a ACE ATM. He set up this ATM in Nangrim sim, but because of our softwares excellent security, it was not able to be activated. We IP traced Charles Granville and Charles Gantenbeins accounts to the same IP address in Pasadena from which the hack on my SL account occured.

As a result of these crimes, Charles has lost his 800,000 shares of BNT, and Charles Gantenbein lost his 1,030,000 shares of BNT. We reproach SLCapex for standing by enjoying the spectacle of this while doing nothing to prevent this fraud.

The Brazillian avatars who hacked my M2B account have lost their deposits for being in receipt of stolen goods, at the very least, even if they were not directly involved in the original account transfer hack of my personal account in M2B before we bought that bank.

As of this time, there have been no further attacks on BNTF or ACE, and our security is amped up considerably.

FURTHER NOTE: In early summer, Thor Columbia loaned JC Brink some 8,000 US for him to buy his Commerce sims. When the 'fraud' of JC Brink's bank was announced, Maelstrom and I went to the commerce sims to investigate. I checked the estate info, and the sims had already been transferred into the ownership of Lindsay and Luke Birdbrain. Given that sim transfers require 7-10 days for LL to process, it is clear that JC Brink's fraud was planned well in advance, and sims which were properly the property of M2B were taken by Lindsay Druart and Luke Birdbrain. They are in receipt of stolen goods.

Given how much Lindsay likes to attack BNT, it seems to be because she knows if she doesn't keep up the attack, more people will investigate how she obtained sims that M2B paid for.