If you want to make nearly half a million from your computer then just steal a password. That’s all thieves had to do to siphon $449,000 from the bank account of the city of Carson in Southern California and would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for a vigilant city treasurer.

The treasurer thinks the thieves stole her password by installing a Trojan horse virus on her laptop, which she also uses at home and on wireless networks. The thieves were then not only able to access the city bank account, which seemed to have only been protected by a simple password, they were also able to change the password and then transfer the money to other bogus accounts without any red flags being raised.

The city claims they caught the theft because of vigilance – pity their security system, and their bank, weren’t as vigilant.