A COUNTY Antrim farmer has issued a warning for others to be extra vigilant after his Danske Bank account was emptied by online criminals.

James Alexander runs a large beef and sheep farm near Toomebridge, and a successful tractor sales business with his father, Nelson.

Unbeknown to the Alexanders, criminals raided one of their business bank accounts and didn’t stop until the full €150,000 had been swiped.

However, James and Nelson are disappointed with the bank as the money continued to be siphoned out of the account after initial smaller illegal withdrawals were recognised by the bank and the account locked.

Danske Bank has since returned all of the money to the account, but has also issued its own warning to customers regarding the dangers of malware and the necessity for robust internet protection software.

The drama started two weeks ago when the bank called James to see if he had authorised some payments out of his sterling account to the value of £8500. This particular account was rarely used, with a sister account held in euros to facilitate transactions for tractors and 4x4s sold to the Republic of Ireland. The hackers were able to infiltrate the system, and transfer all the funds from the euro account into the sterling account before starting to withdraw funds from there.

James said: “We do not use that sterling account frequently so when the bank called and asked if we had authorised large transactions it was a shock. The bank was told immediately that this must be online fraud and we instructed them to stop all transactions immediately. At that point we were locked out of the account and could not open it online but we had previously noticed someone had taken a couple of smaller amounts of £1500 out of the account,” he said.

Being locked out of his own account, James could not monitor what was going on and was later devastated to be told by the bank that the entire account had been cleared.

“Even after we told the bank this was fraud and a hold was put on the account, the criminals managed to continue to take all the funds out of the account which we could not understand,” said James. “The most disappointing aspect was that the money was drawn out of the account after the original phone call at 3.30pm. By 7.30pm all money was gone and we were not informed of this for ten days.

“We only found out by accident after we asked the bank to release some euros to pay bills and the person on the phone said there were none! The bank should have told us the account had been cleared.”

Initial discussions with Danske Bank were not ‘productive’ according to James, as the bank seemed to be blaming a lack of security on his laptop or PC as the cause of the crime. However, James insisted no-one else had access to his computer hardware, except his wife Ruth who manages the office, and father Nelson.

“Danske Bank tried to say someone had used our own computer as if we had left it lying around,” said James. “That was certainly not the case. Then the bank suggested someone had hacked through our online security to empty the account. We have a good security programme in place so I couldn’t see how that was possible."

Following several more discussions between the Alexanders and key bank business account managers, Danske Bank finally agreed to pay back all the money in full which has already been honoured.

Robert McCullough from Danske Bank said: “We are aware of a cyber attack on the bank accounts of a local business and have worked with the owners to ensure that all security protocols are in place and up to date.

“This type of an attack reflects the increasing activity and sophistication of criminal elements and underlines the need for all businesses to ensure that all reasonable steps are taken to safeguard the online security of their systems particularly in guarding against the introduction of malware."