Another great BPO fraud

BANGALORE: An HSBC employee has been charged with stealing confidential data of its customers in the UK to illegally transfer their monies without their knowledge, according to a leading English daily.

The complaint was lodged by the HSBC Electronic Data Processing India Pvt Ltd (HDPI), Bannerghatta Road, against its employee Nadeem Kashmiri (staff ID No. 99564483) with the Cyber Crime Police Station on June 22 this year.

The HDPI has alleged that Nadeem has “accessed personal information; security information and debit card information” of some of its customers in the UK and has passed it to “co-fraudsters” for conducting “fraudulent transactions through ATM, debit cards and telephone banking services at the behest of Nadeem.”

The bank estimates the loss at 233,000 pounds (over Rs 1.75 crore), reports Deccan Herald. The crime has been registered under Section 66 and 72 of the IT Act read with 408, 468 and 420 of the IPC.

The fraud came to light after 20 or more of its customers in the UK lodged a complaint with the bank stating that their money lying in their account were “transferred without their knowledge,” between March and May this year and that they “did not know, who transferred the money.”

In the FIR, Puneet Dar, vice-president, UK Customer Telephone Service (CTS) process operating in the HDPI office stated that the bank conducted an internal investigation and found Nadeem to be the main culprit.

“He has accessed the customers' account without any business requirement and changed the personal information, security information and debit card information. He did not log his access on the front end of the business application, as is the mandatory procedure,” the FIR stated.

The backend system logs indicated that Nadeem accessed the information.

Later, his accomplices called and cleared the procedural security requirement and “requested him for the balance information and conducted the fraudulent transaction. Nadeem facilitated his accomplices to impersonate the actual customers to enable them to cheat the HDPI and HSBC customers,” further stated the FIR.

In the process of investigation, the HSBC also found that Nadeem joined HDPI on December 12, 2005 on “false records and misrepresentation. He omitted to mention his employment with Accenture and provided false references for conducting reference checks.”

The bank has alleged that Nadeem joined HSBC “with the intention to deceive and cheat the bank and its customers. He accessed customers accounts unauthorised from the day he was deputed on the processing floor, on February 6.”

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