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Call center worker held over bank hacking

Officers of the Corps of Detectives Cyber Crime Branch take Nadeem Kashmiri, center, the main suspect in the HSBC data theft case, to the court after interrogation in Bangalore on Wednesday. PHOTO: EPA

A worker at HSBC's Bangalore, India, call center has been arrested after being allegedly caught supplying personal details to fraudsters who went on to steal ?230,000 (US$418,370) from 16 of the bank's UK customers.

Nadeem Kashmiri, who has worked for HSBC for less than six months, was charged on Wednesday with allegedly hacking into the company's files and passing on information to allow others to steal the money.

HSBC said yesterday that enough personal details had been passed on to allow the fraudsters -- also believed to be in India -- to transfer the money to a number of Indian banks.

Kashmiri was caught after accessing bank account details that he had no reason to open.

An HSBC spokesman said: "All the affected customers have been contacted and fully reimbursed, plus any charges they have incurred as a result of the theft."

He went on to play down the India connection.

"The levels of fraud," he said, "has historically been much lower than we have experienced in the UK."

But news of the theft is bound to re-ignite the debate about UK companies sending call center work offshore. Two weeks ago the UK utility company Powergen said it was closing its Indian call center, blaming a negative effect on customer service.

Companies moving call centers and other operations abroad are rewarded with savings of between 37 percent and 55 percent in operating costs. But David Fleming, the national officer of the union Amicus, said: "If a world player like HSBC is vulnerable to fraud within their overseas call centers, then every organization outsourcing work is vulnerable, too.

"The news comes immediately after Powergen's wise decision to bring work back to the UK because of customer dissatisfaction. We are urging other companies to re-think their offshoring strategies urgently," he said.

Call center workers have proved so unpopular with many UK consumers that several banks now heavily advertise they are committed to keeping all call handling in the UK. They see it as a way of attracting new customers from rivals, helped along by several high-profile stories in the media concerning security.

Earlier this year a reporter from London's Sun newspaper managed to obtain UK customer bank details from a call center worker in India, while an Australian TV program also gained banking customers' details including birth certificates, driving licenses and ATM card numbers.

Meanwhile, senior consultants to the offshore industry have said other companies are considering ending their Indian call center operations because of the negative effect on their brands.

Mike Harvard, managing director of CM Insight, speaking before the news of the HSBC arrest, said: "Questions are being asked in boardrooms across the country about whether the savings are worth the potential loss of consumer confidence."
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