The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was hacked — and $100 million was swiped from the Bangladeshi government’s account, Bangladesh’s central bank charged Monday.
The Central Bank of Bangladesh said the cyberthieves laundered at least some of the funds through casinos in the Philippines. According to the AFP, Bangladesh claimed that the funds were transferred to both Philippines and Sri Lanka.
The Bangladeshi authorities said investigators were working with Filipino officials to find the funds.
“It has been possible to recover a portion of the amount ‘hacked’ from Bangladesh Bank’s reserve account in the United States,’’ the Bangladesh Embassy in the US said in a statement.
“Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit is engaged with the Philippines’ anti-money laundering authority to trace the destination of the remaining amount and recover the same.
“In the meantime, the Philippines’ anti-money-laundering authority filed case in that country and obtained court order to freeze the concerned bank accounts.”
The New York Fed, headed by William Dudley, denied it had been hacked.
“To date, there is no evidence of any attempt to penetrate Federal Reserve systems in connection with the payments in question, and there is no evidence that any Fed systems were compromised,” said spokeswoman Andrea Priest.
Some 250 central banks, governments and other institutions have foreign accounts at the New York Fed. They hold mostly US Treasuries and agency debt.
The New York Fed has been hacked before. A British citizen was accused in 2014 of breaching its servers and posting private data.
The Central Bank of Bangladesh, which has $28 billion in currency reserves, said hackers looted its account Feb. 5 and moved money to the Philippines and Sri Lanka, Agence France-Press reported.
The funds were “brought into the Philippines’ banking system, sold to a black-market foreign-exchange broker, transferred to at least three large local casinos, sold back to the money broker and moved out to overseas accounts — all in a matter of days,” the Philippines’ Daily Inquirer said.
(NY Post)