Foxes in the Henhouse

Last month when I tried to transfer money from our bank account to our hired man’s by Internet I was met with a message: You do not have a Clave Dinámica, a Dynamic Key, and this transaction cannot be processed. It was the middle of the month and I needed to pay José’s salary. Obtaining this Dynamic Key required going to town and applying for one in person. So what is this thing, I wondered, and why, oh, why are they making me jump through yet another hoop in the endless Dilbert maze of bureaucracy?

It sounds impressive: Dynamic Key. Like something Superman might use to lock away Kryponite. Or, something you might get inside a cereal box when you were a kid. Or, maybe something that might prevent fraud.That remains to be seen.

Eight days ago the sub-director of the Dirección Inteligencia y Seguridad Nacional (DIS) was arrested. Roberto Guillen Solano along with eight others are accused of syphoning off over two hundred million colones ($500,000.00) from various bank accounts here in Costa Rica.

Now let me begin by saying that the DIS is the Costa Rican equivalent of the United State’s National Security Agency (NSA) and are in charge of… well, the nation’s security. According the one national newspaper, La Nacion, “The DIS is an agency under the Ministry of the Presidency, whose main function is to carry out intelligence work for the government on security matters.” They have full access to a whole spectrum of data on the country’s residents and foreigners who live here. Me, among others. The database (Datum.net) was apparently used to pilfer those who had so much money in their accounts they wouldn’t notice if $2,500.00 or so went missing. That would not be me. I never keep that much money here. I don’t even have that kind of money. So I don’t think they targeted me, but who knows?

Here’s how it worked. Last year Mr. Guillen apparently used his access code to gather information from Datum.net not only from his office but also from his house, according to La Nacion. Through the portal the group obtained peoples names, cedulas (Costa Rican Social Security Numbers), bank accounts, properties owned, vehicles, and other helpful information. They then simply forged checks off those people’s accounts. Pretty brazen. And why they thought they’d not get caught, I have no idea.

Apparently, from what I can glean from news reports, again from La Nacion, Datum.net was a subscriber database and members were issued monthly statements showing who had accessed their accounts in the past month. Mr. Guillen’s name, or code, reappeared over and over. Duh! And this was the sub-director of the agency entrusted with Costa Rica’s national security. It doesn’t bode well for the country, I’d say. The director of the agency was apparently away–– on vacation–– in the USA at the time of the arrests.

But the most appalling thing about this whole mess is, all but two suspects have been released from jail pending trial. They have been told to check in with the attorney general’s office once a month and not contact the other suspects. Two of the suspects have been detained, because they “have a history.” The sub-director of DIS, an official from the phone company, who supplied cell phones for the group, and a lawyer, whose office was used for meetings, are all walking around scot-free.

I now have a Clave Dinámica and I can use it to transfer money from one account to another. It is a plastic card about the size of a business card that has a grid of numbers on it. When completing a transfer I am asked to enter the number corresponding the the intersection of A-1, for instance. There are three sequences of these and then the transaction can be completed. It’s not fool proof. Who knows when another ring of these types will show up and one of them happens to work at the bank and has access to my Dynamic Key and its numbers.