The billion dollar spelling mistake

Thanks to my social network on LinkedIn I came across this article about a billion dollar bank heist; which didn’t go as planned because of a spelling mistake.

The heist happened in February and it involved Bangladesh Central Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Instead of getting away with the billion, as planned, a spelling mistake caused the hackers to get away with “only” $80 million.

The word that triggered the red flag: “foundation” misspelled as “fandation”.

This is a serious matter, of course.
But I couldn’t help laughing at some of the comments.

“The typo makes me think that the hack originated in Nigeria, birthplace of the badly-spelled e-mail scam.”

That comment was quickly corrected by a more knowledgeable poster:

“The facts are that Nigerian Oil Minister scam was run from Bathurst, NSW in Australia.
It gained the name “Nigerian” because the emails purported to come from someone related to a Nigerian official.”

Someone brought politics into it:

“I thought Donald Trump was financing his campaign by his own means!”

That of course got a prompt response from a supporter:

“It couldn’t have been Trump, because he has all the best words”

And my two favorites:

“They simply drilled an internet tunnel into the bank and hey presto!”
“Fantastic, sorry fountastic, story.”

The lesson in this is obvious: education is important!
On either side of the law : )

Mariana Fieraru

Mariana Fieraru, an Eastern European transplant, fell in love with her new home shortly after landing in New York. She "discovered" pizza! Years later she still loves pizza. And so do her two feathered-kids, Sunny and Flipper

Mariana worked on both, the east and the west coast.
Big or small, each project she worked on helped define the importance of gaining and sustaining a competitive edge in an increasingly complex business environment.

Business know-how, love of teaching and writing – all combined in 2006 to form OBI.
Its mission: to make learning fun! And easy.

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