Story Archive

Make Mooney Fast

A series of bank transfer orders instructing the New York Fed to transfer money from the Bangladesh central bank’s account to accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka were being executed since they had the right codes — until one ordered US$20 million to be transferred to a Sri Lankan non-profit which misspelled the organization’s name as a “fandation” rather than a “foundation”. An intermediary, Deutsche Bank, asked the Bangladesh central bank for clarification, and the scheme was uncovered: hackers had stolen Bangladesh Bank’s credentials for payment transfers. The transfer orders totaled around US$940 million. “Only” about US$81 million went through before the ruse was discovered, which still made it one of the largest bank thefts in history. (RC/Australian AP) ...Which is plenty enough to be the fandation of something really big.