Bangalore call centre employee rapped

INDIA – HSBC is prosecuting a former employee in its Bangalore call centre who is accused of passing along customer data to fraudsters. The employee was arrested in late June for allegedly skimming off £233,000 from the accounts of 16 UK-based customers, according to news reports.

The arrest was made after HSBC Electronic Data Processing India, which handles the bank's back-office work, filed a complaint accusing Nadeem Kashmiri of accessing debit card information and passing it on to associates. HSBC said all of the customers involved had been contacted and reimbursed.

In 2005, UK newspaper The Sun and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation claim to have bought account details of overseas customers from an IT worker in Delhi. Earlier that same year, police arrested three Indian call centre employees for attempting to steal $350,000 from the accounts of Citibank clients.

IT consulting firm Gartner said in a report published in 2005 that these types of cases will increase as the demand for more call centre employees over the next several years results in laxer vetting procedures in India.