To answer your question about why US banks would do business with those who seem to sponsor thieves, well, it's very rare that they do. Note that this gets complicated when it's leaving the country.

That could be because, as others have pointed out, the funds have been swept and the beneficiary FI says 'tough shit, your loss' or because the beneficiary bank says 'tough shit, your loss - go tell the police.' Your bank will almost always make you whole on the loss, but they may not be able to recover the funds from the beneficiary themselves. Now, in the event of fraud, domestically, it's not typical that you're on the hook for it. Your bank, as the remitter, doesn't have authority to simply pull it back. This means that your bank's payments department can contact that of the beneficiary and simply ask for them back. Wires are considered guaranteed funds, so they can only be retrieved on a 'best efforts' basis. Am I missing something about how banking works? I honestly don't understand why we can't catch every major scam like this and suspect it's just because the banks think it's easier to push the loss off on someone else instead of doing some paperwork and actually demanding foreign banks act responsibly. If that bank says 'no we are keeping the cash even though it's stolen' why does the US bank do business with them? Why are they even allowed to? If the money is transferred to a foreign bank they know which foreign bank and which account in that bank. They know at the end it's thieves that come in to pull giant bags of cash out of those accounts. They know that it's thieves doing those transactions and who own those accounts. Yes I know money can be transferred from account to account and back and forth and sliced and diced in bits and pieces but the fact is that the bank still has every one of those account numbers. That will be resolved but no one can answer this one question - How is it the bank knows where the money came from and where it went to but cannot reverse the transaction? There's a good chance I'll get some of it back but I might not get it all. I've just been ripped off though someone accessing my account and doing a wire.

Reverse wire transfer bank of america