Three hackers from a North Korean cyber intelligence agency have been charged in the US with masterminding a €13million heist on Bank of Valletta.  

The US Justice Department charged the computer programmers with participating in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to conduct a series of cyberattacks. 

The group is accused to have stolen and extorted more than €1.07 billion in money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies across the globe, including BOV.  

Hackers broke into BOV’s IT systems and walked away with millions of euros in 2019.  

In May of 2019 the bank said it had recovered €10 million.

The hacking indictment filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles this week charges that Jon Chang Hyok, 31; Kim Il, 27; and Park Jin Hyok, 36, were members of units of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), a military intelligence agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which engaged in criminal hacking.

“As laid out in today’s indictment, North Korea’s operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash, are the world’s leading bank robbers,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.