Manager at Back Bay bank admits he siphoned money out of dormant accounts

I just read over the document and I see at least two major snafus. First one was transferring money from an account to his personal account at a different bank. The other one was forging a check made payable to just his last name. In both instances linking himself to the accounts.

From there I can see a few scenarios playing out. One scenario is the bank noticed that money from long dormant accounts was suddenly moving and as time went on the amounts got higher. This could have been caught by a human tasked with tracking dormant accounts (I had a dormant account , it was dormant for a reason) and every couple years I would get a call from my bank asking if it was still good... I suspect it's someone's job to run these reports every so often and Mr Wadsworth didn't take that into account. With computer software now it might be even easier. Especially because at one point there was a six digit transfer connected to an account that had been dormant.

Another scenario is someone's grandmother has a side account and when they passed away the family we t to cash it in and the money was gone.

A third possibility is audits were done where bank employee names were checked against account transfers and his name popped up. With advances in software and machine learning it must be easier than ever to run these sorts of audits.

I have to assume that massive transfer of funds of 100k in one swoop might have been the red flag no matter what. It feels like enough money that having it move like that after years of being dormant might have triggered some internal checks.

For some reason this reminds me of the Office Space scheme where they talk about the scheme to Superman II, taking pennies out of each account but end up taking larger sums by accident leading to a conversation about prisons.

You'd find it interesting. Money in bank accounts doesn't just sit there, it gets loaned out to other people and "stays" in the economy. This is why banks are better for the economy vs storing your money in a box at home.

The bank keeps a small percentage of money aside which collectively is enough to give back to people when they make a withdrawal. A bank run is when enough bank customers want their money back at the same time and the bank runs out of this reserve. (See SVB.)