As details continue to emerge concerning the $81 million cyberheist of funds from the Bangladesh Central Bank by way of hacked wire-transfer requests sent to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (NY Fed), a lingering question remains regarding the role people played in approving the transfer requests. It has recently been reported that shortly before the fraudulent transfers were approved, they had been denied before being resubmitted.The Bangladesh cyberattack consisted of a total of 35 fraudulent transfer requests totaling over $1 billion in transactions. The first time the 35 requests were submitted, all 35 were rejected because they did not contain all of the information required to process a transfer request.
Later that same day the hackers resubmitted all 35 requests and this time five were approved and 30 were flagged for additional review. Of the five requests that were approved, one was later denied because of a typo in the name of the recipient. However, four of the fraudulent transfers made it through the system resulting in a loss of $81 million.In light of the news of the initial denial of all 35 fraudulent requests, the question becomes, was a person involved in screening the resubmitted transfer requests? And if not, why not?
