Dhaka/New York: When the Federal Reserve Bank of New York cleared five transactions made by the Bangladesh Bank hackers, the money went in two directions. That evening, RCBC told Bangladesh Bank that it had frozen the four suspect accounts—but that only $68,305 was left in them. Late on Monday, according to Bangladesh Bank officials and the Philippine senate testimony, Bangladesh Bank sent messages via the SWIFT bank messaging system to RCBC asking it to freeze the money that had arrived in the four individuals’ accounts. According to testimony by Estavillo and bank officials, $22.7 million was withdrawn from one of the RCBC accounts during the afternoon of Friday, 5 February. Over that weekend Bangladesh Bank was struggling to understand what had happened and to cancel the hackers’ fraudulent payment requests; meanwhile, the Fed had raised concerns over some of the requests but did little more.

Source: Mint July 21, 2016 13:52 UTC