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Bank Error Gives Virginia Beach Employees Home Access to Accounts with Millions of Dollars

Bank accounts could be accessed from any computer

Apr 6, 2015 10:19 GMT  ·  By
Bank of America slips code for home access to all accounts of City of Virginia Beach
   Bank of America slips code for home access to all accounts of City of Virginia Beach

Two Virginia Beach city employees received access from home to all the bank accounts belonging to the municipality, one of them holding more than $50 / €45.5 million.

None of the workers was with the City Treasurer’s Office, which would also have not explained the security blunder, and they could access the accounts from any place, just like in the case of regular home banking.

Accounts reviewed for fraudulent activity

These accounts are protected by higher levels of security due to the large sums of money they hold, and individuals authorized to handle them should have business banking access, and they should not be able to log in from the home computer, says city auditor Lyndon Remias.

The issue was discovered during a financial review carried out recently by Remias and his staff.

Currently, there is no indication that funds have been diverted from the municipality into the personal accounts of the two workers, but an investigation has been deployed to review the transactions from those accounts, which could take weeks to complete.

“The City Council and the City Treasurer’s Office are aware of the potential seriousness of this situation,” Mayor William D. Sessoms, Jr. said in a press release on Friday.

“We trust that our city staff and the treasurer’s staff will thoroughly review the issue and take proper steps to ensure the security of our taxpayer funds,” he added.

Personal and municipal accounts unlocked with one access code

Remias told the Virginia Pilot that Bank of America gave one of the employees the access code for all the accounts when she set up a personal one for herself.

The code worked for all bank accounts and as such, whenever she wanted to make a personal transaction she had to scroll past the municipality accounts to get to her money.

The auditor also said that the employee’s account never held more than $5,000 and was intended for small expenses.

When confronted, the employee cooperated without hesitation and demonstrated how she would manage her own money and skip the entries with the funds handled by the City Treasurer’s Office.