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Suppose bank A creates a new account, and adds 1000 euro's to it, by just changing the relevant field in the database from 0 to 1000, without any money being taken from another account. It then makes up an incoming transaction to cover the 1000, in which it claims the money came from some small local bank B at the other side of the world.

Is there any institution that would verify this claim made by bank A with bank B? I.e. they would ask bank B if they have a matching transaction in their system.

user2520938
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    Presumably auditors? "You said there was EUR8,000,000 incoming from RusBank, but other sources show only EUR7,500,000 incoming from RusBank. Maybe there was fraud on the RusBank side, diverting EUR 500,000, but it's a place to start looking. – RonJohn Jul 31 '19 at 18:44
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    Regarding the votes to close - is this really an economics question? We have many questions on here about how banking works, how wire transfers work, or similar - which remain open and get participation. How is this one more off topic than those? – dwizum Jul 31 '19 at 19:30
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    @dwizum: It's off-topic because it doesn't fall into the area of personal finance. Whether it falls into the area of economics, or computer security, or financial regulation, or whatever doesn't matter a whole lot, as long as it's not personal finance. – Ben Voigt Jul 31 '19 at 21:18

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There really isn't a direct answer to the question in your headline. There are several mechanisms and networks via which you can make an "international wire transfer" and, essentially speaking, there isn't one single all-powerful org balancing everyone's books all at once for all possible transfer mechanisms. But that's OK, because the systems are built to not need one, and the fundamental way that money works makes it unnecessary anyways.

Your proposed scenario hinges on two specific activities that would either be hard to implement or would be easy to discover after the fact, to the point that you'd be easily stopped trying to carry this plan out, or caught after the fact, probably quicker than you could spend your fake money.

  • Suppose bank A creates a new account, and adds 1000 euro's to it, by just changing the relevant field in the database from 0 to 1000: Most banking systems have internal mechanisms to prevent this from happening - i.e. you can't simply change a value in the database without repercussions. Sometimes these mechanisms are fairly passive (an exception report would be generated showing that the books don't balance) but other times they are more robust (balance and transactional amount data is encrypted and not directly editable in the database, you'd need to defeat an app-level mechanism in order to change it. Or, tables storing this info have triggers implemented that balance transactions and accounts automatically). Banking systems are also built with databases that include lots of auditing, so generally speaking, even if you managed to change the database value, you'd be leaving a permanent record (often in a different system with separate access controls) of what you did. Even if people didn't notice this activity immediately, it would certainly turn up during an audit.
  • Your proposal for hiding the fake money (presumably, as a way of explaining where the 1000 euro came from) was It then makes up an incoming transaction to cover the 1000 - by this, I'm assuming you're indicating that the fraudster would edit an incoming file for wire transfers to create a new transfer for the fake money. The problem with this, is that wire transfers aren't single-ended transactions - there's essentially always a "from" and "to" entity and account. Networks implement feedback mechanisms to ensure that transactions process successfully - essentially, once banks process incoming transfer files, they produce a summary back to the network that explains the net changes in balance between themselves and other institutions. Then the network shuffles these amounts among the bank's funding accounts. If your bank got 1,000 transactions which resulted in a net of $1M in transactions from bank A and $2M from bank B, you'd report that back to the network. Your reports would match bank A's and bank B's and the network would move the money. Getting back to your plan - if you try to stick your fraudulent transaction into an incoming file, you'd need to include it in the feedback too, in order to not tip off the automatic checks in the system or the auditors (who will balance your incoming files against your return summaries), which would instantly be spotted by the network.

Basically, what it boils down to is, banks do not fundamentally create money. They simply hold it, or move it. By definition, this means that there isn't a way for your fraud scheme to work, because any transaction a bank can perform includes another party (who isn't "in" on your scheme) and some mechanism for validating the transaction. This applies to all mechanisms via which money can be moved, not just electronic transfers:

  • Paper checks are processed through networks with similar feedback mechanisms to electronic transfers. If a bank employee tried to make fake checks from some random other bank to deposit, the other bank would know about it (and stop it) when they received the checks to complete the transaction. If an employee tried to make fake checks from a fake bank, the clearinghouse bank would find it and stop it.
  • As cash turns over in a bank, it (eventually) changes hands to third parties. It's either issued to customers making withdrawals, or it's sold to another bank or a cash management vendor. A bank employee who tried to fund a fake account by either making counterfeit cash or just faking a cash deposit (without actually depositing anything at all), and who was smart enough to defeat automatic cash machines and cash drawer accounting within the bank's systems, would still get discovered when the bank sold that cash or tried to issue it to fund withdrawals.

So to make this all crystal clear, when you said,

and adds 1000 euro's to it

that's simply not possible, without including a third party, who - not being "in" on the fraud, would discover the scheme and turn you in.

dwizum
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  • Thank you for the extensive answer. I have two questions though: 1) where can I read up on how this whole system works? 2) And what is “the network” you refer to in your answer? From what you’re saying this sounds almost like it is a decentralized entity much like in a blockchain, to which everybody reports their transactions. I was under the impression that with the banking system their was no such network? – user2520938 Jul 31 '19 at 22:18
  • @user2520938 in the United States, since 1913 it's the Federal Reserve: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve#Check_clearing_system – user662852 Aug 01 '19 at 11:27
  • @user2520938 - "the network" will vary depending on the method of transfer and the jurisdiction. Essentially, many nations or pools of nations have their own centralized management of electronic transfers via some central network (usually run by the state's central bank). And there are usually many similar protocols and networks (i.e. EFT vs ACH) in a given system. But these networks only exist to facilitate these specific transactions (not all banking transactions) and there are many of them - there isn't a single global entity that oversees all of them. – dwizum Aug 01 '19 at 11:51
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    @dwizum I'm late to reply to you, but thanks for this answer, this is the info I was looking for. – user2520938 Sep 19 '19 at 16:38