Hackers Almost Stole $1 Billion, If Only They Hadn’t Made a Typo

You know those scam emails that give themselves away because of broken English and spelling mistakes? Here's the ultimate example.

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Some hackers managed to get into the national banking system in Bangladesh last month. They stole the credentials for transfers, and went after their target: Bangladesh's national account at the Federal Reserve in New York.

They sent more than 30 transfer requests, and routed them to fake nonprofits and organizations they'd set up. If all the transfers had gone through, the hackers would've cleared around $1 billion.

There was only one problem, they made a typo. The fifth transfer was for a nonprofit in Sri Lanka, and they meant to write "Foundation," but they wrote "Fandation" instead. This caused their transfer to get flagged, the bank looked into it, and they were found out.

The first four transfers did go through though. They transferred out $81 million, because the Fed thought they were going to organizations in the Philippines. Not bad.

Bangladesh is still trying to figure out how it got hacked and track down the thieves and their $81 million.