Essilor Manufacturing, the French manufacturer of Ray-Ban glasses, is suing JPMorgan for failing to stop suspicious transactions after cybercriminals looted $272 million from its New York account. The criminals had recruited one of its employees in Thailand to make the fraudulent transactions.
In a lawsuit filed by Essilor, the company mentioned that JPMorgan should have detected, reported and blocked suspicious payments that occurred in the last few months of 2019. The money was sent to shell companies with names such as Guangzhou Wendy Hair Products or Citgo Oil Trading LLC. The company has recovered about $100 million of the stolen funds.
Essilor Manufacturing says JPMorgan ignored the numerous red flags that should have been raised from the unusual pattern of transactions. The lawsuit said that the individual transactions were all done in round numbers, without cents, and authorizations took less than a minute instead of hours.
JPMorgan said, “It is very unfortunate when losses occur with any of our clients as a result of a breakdown of a client’s own internal controls, and Essilor has acknowledged publicly that colluding employees successfully circumvented the company’s internal controls to submit, approve and confirm the fraudulent payment orders.”
