In a June 13 decision, the court ruled in favor of Experi-Metal, a Sterling Heights, Michigan, custom auto-parts maker that had sued Comerica after the January 2009 incident. In just a few hours, criminals tried to move millions of dollars to Eastern Europe before Comerica's fraud department shut down the scam. Most of the money was recovered, but in his ruling Judge Patrick Duggan of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan said that the bank should have done a better job of stopping the fraud. A "bank dealing fairly with its customers, under these circumstances, would have detected and/or stopped the fraudulent wire activity earlier," Judge Duggan wrote in his ruling.

Experi-Metal's troubles started in the early morning hours of Jan. 22, 2009. That's when the company's vice president of manufacturing, Gerry King, received a phishing e-mail telling him to fill out what appeared to be a mundane piece of online paperwork: a "Comerica Business Connect Customer Form." He forwarded the e-mail to Controller Keith Maslowski, who then logged into a website belonging to the criminals. With Maslowski's login credentials, the criminals were off and running. Over the next six-and-a-half hours they raced to steal as much of Experi-Metal's money as they could before their window of opportunity closed.

Comerica learned about the problem about four hours into the fraud, when J.P. Morgan Chase called to report some suspicious transactions coming into its accounts from Experi-Metal's account. A much larger bank, Chase could move money overseas, so the criminals were funneling money into Chase accounts in order to then transfer it to Russia and Estonia.

Comerica's fraud department immediately took away Experi-Metal's account, but they made a mistake. They didn't knock the fraudsters off the Comerica server. Still logged in, the criminals managed to initiate another 15 wire transfers before a Comerica quality risk manager finally killed their session. That final push netted the criminals nearly $50,000.

After Comerica refused to cover the $560,000 loss, Experi-Metal filed suit, arguing that the bank should not have allowed the transfers. Comerica countered that since Experi-Metal was the company that was phished, it should have to pay.