Isn't it exactly a human error that you are describing? The root cause was a distracted employee that input wrong information in the system, not the system being flawed...
Sure, the root cause was incompetence when closing down accounts but that is not the problem.
The real problem manifested in human blindly accepting what the computer told them. If there is no reason, or even NEED to apply critical thinking, why is there a human involved at all? This is not an indictment of automation over human labour. I would rather that humans are in the loop precisely because they have the ability to spot these kinds of errors - and help to correct them. Computers are good at repeating mundane tasks. Humans are not. We should be making most of their distinct abilities, not molding the two into same form.
Now, Temporal rightly pointed out that this might have been a case of attempted fraud. But if you are trying to spot fraud, spotting anomalies and being critical on what you accept as objective truth should be on the top of your mental map.
The root cause was a system that allowed a potentially incompetent employee to indiscriminately close bank accounts without at least a date of birth or social security number confirmation. It's a problem that could have been prevented with a four to eight digit input field and an if statement.
The system isn't flawed only in the sense that the bank doesn't give a shit. They get to reap the returns on your capital either way.
The real problem manifested in human blindly accepting what the computer told them. If there is no reason, or even NEED to apply critical thinking, why is there a human involved at all? This is not an indictment of automation over human labour. I would rather that humans are in the loop precisely because they have the ability to spot these kinds of errors - and help to correct them. Computers are good at repeating mundane tasks. Humans are not. We should be making most of their distinct abilities, not molding the two into same form.
Now, Temporal rightly pointed out that this might have been a case of attempted fraud. But if you are trying to spot fraud, spotting anomalies and being critical on what you accept as objective truth should be on the top of your mental map.