Cyber Incident Victim: Sunu Bank

OnApril 7, 2025, BICIS, which had recently been acquired by the Sunu group, was in the process of migrating from its legacy Connexis application to the new My Sunu Corporation platform. During this migration window, cybercriminals gained unauthorized access to the bank’s systems and initiated fraudulent debits totaling an estimated 211 million CFA francs from the accounts of various clients, including pharmacies and notary offices. The unauthorized transactions were detected by the bank’s monitoring mechanisms, prompting the financial prosecutor to request the opening of a judicial investigation, which was assigned to the judge of the third financial chamber. Libération reported that the Dakar Research Section (SR) began tracing the flow of the illicit funds to identify those involved.

The SR’s tracking led to the arrest of Modou Diom, the collection agent for Bamba Global Industrie Suarl, in the Sicap Foire district. During his interrogation, Modou Diom stated that a Nigerian national identified as Sunday Akamibé had solicited him for account numbers to facilitate transfers. He disclosed that he provided the account details of D. Gaye, who later presented himself to the SR to denounce the scheme, as well as the two bank account numbers belonging to his employer, Khadim Khouma. Once the fraudulent credits appeared in those accounts, Sunday Akamibé instructed Modou Diom to convert the amounts into USDT cryptocurrency and remit the equivalent value to a designated wallet, for which Modou Diom said he received a payment of 300,000 CFA francs per transaction. Modou Diom further claimed that Khadim Khouma was unaware of the illegal source of the funds. In his own statement, Khadim Khouma said that Modou Diom had told him a client required his account number for a transfer, prompting him to share his banking details and subsequently receive two transfers aggregating 35 million CFA francs. Khadim Khouma reported that Modou Diom then asked him to convert the received funds into USDT using an account supplied by Modou Diom, while maintaining that he had no knowledge of the funds’ origin and did not personally know Sunday Akamibé.

The gendarmes’ investigation revealed that Khadim Khouma lacked any legal authorization to conduct currency exchange or conversion activities within Senegal, exposing him to significant risks of tax evasion. Because Sunday Akamibé remained at large, the SR executed a search of his premises, where they uncovered 10.684 million CFA francs in cash and 36 cocaine pellets. Following these findings, Khadim Khouma was apprehended at his residence and reiterated during questioning that Modou Diom had informed him of a client’s request to send money to his account. Investigators also identified eleven additional recipients of the fraudulent transfers, including merchants and operators of money‑transfer businesses, who are currently being sought. The financial prosecutor, now overseeing the case, formally requested that the judge of the third chamber open a judicial investigation charging the suspects with criminal association, complicity in theft via fraudulent computer system entry, concealment, breach of exchange regulations, possession and international drug trafficking, and money laundering. According to Libération, the two primary suspects awaited a determination of their legal status after the case was returned to the prosecutor’s office.