After a chaotic weekend that involved multiple BDO users losing their money in a hacking incident, partylist group Bayan Muna filed a house resolution calling Congress, specifically the Committee on Banks and Financial Intermediaries, to investigate the incident.

In its house resolution filing, Bayan Muna explains that “Congress should protect the welfare of the Filipino people against these fraudulent activities, especially amid the pandemic and economic crisis.” Aside from the need to protect all bank transactions, Bayan Muna also calls for “speedy reimbursements of the affected consumers of their hard-earned money”.

Their reasoning for calling an investigation into the incident is in order for other banks and BSP find more protective measures and policies to ensure that the hacking incident will not happen again.

Prior to congress’ call to investigate the hacking incident, both BSP and BDO assured affected accountholders that the money they lost will be reimbursed, while BDO has imposed to all of its online banking users to change their passwords. BSP is also coordinating with Unionbank as well for remedial measures to “ensure the safety and integrity of the financial system”.

The incident, which occurred over the weekend, involved BDO account holders losing at least Php 50,000 to unauthorized transactions made through various Unionbank accounts. The majority of the Unionbank accounts in question were allegedly owned by a certain Mark Nagoyo. What made the scheme sophisticated is that all unauthorized transactions bypassed secure authentication methods like 2FA.