Self-styled lord jailed after world-record heist bid
Hugh Rodley, whose aristocratic pretensions were based on a manorial title, teamed up with a gang of international cyber raiders targeting a £229 million (€254m) Japanese bank fortune.
Rodley, branded by the judge as the “chief executive” of the scam, presided over a complicated array of overseas front companies and accounts to launder the hoped-for fortune, London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.
But he used others, including a Soho sex shop boss as fronts, to “distance” himself from the operation and help avert suspicion.
Meanwhile an “insider” at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation unlocked its London offices so hackers — using security cards belonging to other staff — could make “surreptitious” night-time visits.
He also tampered with CCTV cameras and severed cables, but his bid to prevent their illicit activities being recorded proved unsuccessful when recovered footage showed him laughing and joking with his fellow conspirators.
Once inside, the two computer experts used pirated software to “corrupt” the bank’s system, record the keystrokes of staff and reveal user names and passwords.
That provided access to massive holdings of such major companies as Toshiba International, Nomura Asset Management, Mitsui OSK Lines and Sumitomo Chemical UK.
Repeated attempts followed to wire up to e13.9m at a time around the world.
Fortunately, crucial last minute “field logging errors” prevented the transfers going through.
Had they succeeded the audacious theft would have topped the record books, dwarfing the £53m Tonbridge cash heist and even a £141m robbery in Baghdad.
Rodley, 61, who lives in a £2m mansion in Church End, Twyning, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and continued to protest his innocence through his barrister yesterday, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to transfer criminal property between January 1 and October 5, 2004.
While in jail the angina sufferer, who underwent triple heart by-pass surgery in 2004, will be subject to a Financial Reporting Order requiring him to regularly update the authorities on his financial position.
