Tom Young

Anyone familiar with the HBO television series The Wire will be pleased to hear that its heady mix of politics, high-tech surveillance and obstructive bureaucracy is not limited to the US law enforcement operations it portrays.

The four-year investigation into the attempted theft of £229m from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), and subsequently the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) carried all the hallmarks of a long-term investigation by Jimmy McNulty and the Major Crimes Unit of the Baltimore Police Department. Here’s why.

First, the professionalism of parts of the police. Baltimore’s finest might never venture too far from a bar or a bottle of good Catholic whiskey, but they would never miss out on a juicy case – unlike the City of London police.

Staff at Sumitomo Mitsui first contacted the City of London force – ­ traditionally responsible for policing financial crime in the City – ­ to report the incident. The City force asked them to fax over some details, and said they would get right on it. Figuring that anyone who still used a fax in the 21st century was probably not best equipped to investigate the most high-tech UK bank heist ever attempted, Sumitomo staff called the NHTCU.

The second similarity is in the thrill of the chase. Police in The Wire are rarely motivated by a moral duty ­ – they’re too long in tooth for that. For them it is playing and winning “the game” which motivates them to hunt down the criminals.

The NHTCU staff may have a stronger moral code that the characters in The Wire, but investigators in the NHTCU shared the enthusiasm for real police work. As soon as the Sumitomo Mitsui call came in, there was a buzz around the unit. “This is what we were set up to do,” said the unit’s chief.

Third, the importance of following the money. The practice is often discouraged because it makes an investigation sprawl and can lead to unexpected areas. To quote The Wire’s Lester Freamon: “You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where… it’s gonna take you.”

Initially, the Crown Prosecution Service did not want the NHTCU to follow the money overseas. Eventually, a change in staffing meant the NHTCU could take the investigation international.

Fourth, the high-tech element of modern police work. Baltimore’s investigators would have killed for some of the resources available to the NHTCU. Within days of the heist attempt being discovered, investigators were pulling all the calls off mobile phone masts in the City. Thousands were spent on accessing phone records to link the hackers to the organisers. Tracing lines and patterns of communication is a key element of modern police work.

Fifth, the crooks. If viewers of The Wire think a church-going stick-up man with a strict moral code or a drug kingpin who attends business school are good characters, they will appreciate the bogus aristocrat, Soho sex shop owner with international financial expertise and mercenary hacker who perpetrated the Sumitomo heist.

Finally, the politics of “the game”. Throughout The Wire we see investigations thwarted by the politics of competing egos within the police force and the criminal justice system. When the NHTCU became part of Soca, there was pressure from above for the case to be dropped because no money was actually stolen and publicity had died down. Nonetheless, the strength of the case carried it through political obstructions. But when the Sumitomo Mitsui perpetrators were sent down, who should appear on the TV news bulletins taking credit but Soca director general Bill Hughes.

Those who have seen The Wire can imagine what McNulty would have thought of that.

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