Treasurer Malemo Tausaga has confirmed that investigations are underway on how funds in an ASG bank account was mysteriously transferred to another bank.
KHJ News was told that the funds were subsidies for the LBJ Hospital and the reported amount was $4 million.
Malemo said, in response to KHJ News questions, at this stage it’s too early to even suggest that this was the work of a hacker. KHJ News asked if this was similar to what happened several years ago, when a hacker transferred funds from an ASG account at the Bank of Hawaii to the Bank of Vietnam.
The Treasurer said it’s only been a week since they discovered that the money had been transferred out of the ASG account.
“We are still investigating what happened,” said Malemo.
The incident was discovered when LBJ inquired about their subsidy payments.
Th subsidies are to be transferred to the LBJ’s account with First Hawaiian Bank; however, the money was wired to a Wells Fargo account. Problem is, LBJ doesn’t have an account with Wells Fargo.
No information could be obtained on the owner of the Wells Fargo account that the subsidy money was transferred to.
With the funds that were transferred to the Bank of Vietnam, a hacker sent instructions to employees at Treasury to transfer $1.2 million from an ASG account at Bank of Hawaii to the Bank of Vietnam in 2011. It took high level negotiations involving then-Congressman Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin to recoup the money, and it was finally returned in 2015.
Another incident happened in 2017 when the Department of Human and Social Services wired a payment of $200,000 to an off island vendor. Except that the account belonged to a hacker, not the real vendor.
In that case, an employee of DHSS was apparently sent an email purporting to be from the vendor and asking for payment.
The sender provided a phony bank account number. The employee forwarded the email to the DHSS Finance Division and the email found its way to Treasury with a request to pay.
Treasury later wire transferred the payment of $200,000 to the account given in the email. The one belonging to a hacker, not the DHSS vendor.
It was mentioned during Fono hearings on the Bank of Vietnam transfer that Treasury had taken steps to prevent a repeat of what happened back in 2011.
