Fergie's Tech Blog

Texas Bank Sues Customer Hit by $800,000 Cyber Heist

Brian Krebs:

A machine equipment company in Texas is tussling with its bank after organized crooks swiped more than $800,000 in a 48-hour cyber heist late last year. While many companies similarly victimized over the past year have sued their banks for having inadequate security protection, this case is unusual because the bank is preemptively suing the victim.

Both the victim corporation – Plano based Hillary Machinery Inc. – and the bank, Lubbock based PlainsCaptial, agree on this much: In early November, cyber thieves initiated a series of unauthorized wire transfers totaling $801,495 out of Hillary’s account, and PlainsCapital managed to retrieve roughly $600,000 of that money.

PlainsCaptial sued Hillary on Dec. 31, 2009, citing a letter from Hillary that demanded repayment for the rest of the money and alleged that the bank failed to employ commercially reasonable security measures. The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to certify that PlainsCapital’s security was in fact reasonable, and that it processed the wire transfers in good faith. The documents filed with the court allege that the fraudulent transactions were initiated using the defendant’s valid online banking credentials.

posted by Fergie @ 1/26/2010 06:57:00 PM