One hopes that vetting procedures for accessing Swift's secure SwiftNet network are much stricter than those for its online community forums at
swiftcommunity.net. It seems that a Nigerian 419 fraudster was able to register, get a username and password, and send the usual "investment opportunity" email using the internal message system.
Erstwhile Finextra Community regular and paid Swiftcommunity columnist Chris Skinner relates the tale on one of
his other blogs.
To be fair to Swift, they allow anyone with a valid email address to sign up for alerts about event announcements and new blog posts from their several regular posters. Some of their community forums are open to anyone too, but many are private invitation-only
affairs with sporadic discussion about standards, working with Swift etc.
I just checked to see if the offending fraudster - one Elias Molawa from Western Sector Resources in Ghana - was still registered as one of Swiftcommunity's several thousand members, and it seems he is. I wonder how long he'll remain?