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The "Billion-Dollar Bank Heist in Bangladesh," also known as the 2016 Bangladesh Bank Cyber Heist, was a highly sophisticated cybercrime that targeted the central bank of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Bank. In February 2016, hackers infiltrated the bank’s computer systems and managed to gain access to its SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) credentials, a secure messaging system used for international financial transactions.

Once inside, the hackers initiated nearly three dozen fraudulent transactions, attempting to transfer a total of $951 million from Bangladesh Bank's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to accounts in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and other countries. The heist was meticulously planned to take advantage of a holiday weekend, and it leveraged multiple layers of deception, including malware that masked the hackers’ activities.

Fortunately, most of the transactions were flagged as suspicious, and about $850 million worth of transfers were halted. However, $81 million successfully made its way to accounts in the Philippines, where it was quickly laundered through casinos and other venues, making recovery difficult. The heist exposed vulnerabilities in global banking security, highlighted the challenges of cybercrime prevention, and set off an international investigation that drew in authorities from multiple countries, including the United States, the Philippines, and Bangladesh.

Despite efforts to trace the money, recover the stolen funds, and identify those responsible, much of the stolen money remains missing, and the perpetrators have yet to be fully brought to justice. The incident is considered one of the largest cyber heists in history, revealing weaknesses in the international banking system's security and cooperation mechanisms.