At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, this could have been an internal actor at the bank. The money wasn’t lost; it was moved to an investment account, apparently under the same name. There’s a big push at Chase to get people to use their investment accounts, to the point that I get flyers promising hundreds of dollars to do so. It could be that someone at Chase saw this as an easy way to bump their numbers.<p>Normally, I would consider this a far-fetched fantasy, but after seeing similar fraud at Wells Fargo as a result of their incentive programs, nothing would surprise me.
I recall talking to a guy who was a contractor to banks that helped them with security. I asked what happened in cases where someone had money stolen via an online breach.<p>He said, “If the thief stole $50, the bank would make it up to keep you as a happy customer. If it was $50,000, well, the bank doesn’t want you as a customer that much.”
Welcome to the 2020s.<p>The leaks from corporations, social media, webmail and cloud storage will keep piling up; bad actors will increasingly cross-reference them. Cheaper storage, faster network speeds, and more capable AI (eg: to identify faces) will exacerbate the problem.<p>It's a disaster looming over our near future.