By Jean Lee, Geoff White and Viv Jones

BBC World Service

Imagine you're a low-wage worker in India who is offered a day's employment as an extra in a Bollywood film. Your role? To go to a cash point and withdraw some money.

In 2018, several men in Maharashtra state thought they were accepting a bit-part in a movie - but in fact they were being tricked into being money mules, collecting cash in an ambitious bank heist.

The raid took place over a weekend in August 2018, and centred on Cosmos Co-operative bank, which has its headquarters in Pune.

On a quiet Saturday afternoon, staff in the bank's head office suddenly received a string of alarming messages.

They were from the card payment company Visa in the United States, warning it could see thousands of demands flooding in for large cash withdrawals from ATMs - by people apparently using Cosmos Bank cards.

But when the Cosmos team checked their own systems, they saw no abnormal transactions.

About half-an-hour later, just to be safe, they authorised Visa to stop all transactions from Cosmos bank cards. This delay would turn out to be extremely costly.

The next day, Visa shared the full list of suspect transactions with the Cosmos head office: about 12,000 separate withdrawals from different ATMs around the world.

The bank had lost nearly $14m (£11.5m).

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