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Arrest made over HSBC Indian call centre theft
Bangalore employee paid £1,000 to leak confidential data

By Andy McCue

Published: Thursday 29 June 2006

An Indian call centre worker at HSBC's Bangalore offshore operation has been arrested on hacking charges relating to theft of £233,000 from the accounts of some of the bank's UK customers.

The 24-year-old Nadeem Kashmiri was arrested by police on Wednesday after going on the run when the fraud was discovered recently by HSBC.

He is currently being held by Bangalore's cyber crime police and could face up to five years in jail if found guilty of hacking and breach of confidentiality charges.

HSBC was alerted to the fraud by its internal security systems, which discovered that confidential account information of a small number of UK customers had been accessed and leaked by a member of staff at the data processing centre in Bangalore.

Reports in India claim Kashmiri was paid just under £1,000 to leak the confidential account details by a criminal gang in the UK, which used the information to set up money transfers from the victims' accounts.

Martyn Hart, chairman of the UK's National Outsourcing Association, said this kind of data breach can happen anywhere around the world but warned that the relatively low pay of some workers in offshore locations makes them an easier target for criminals.

HSBC has said it will aggressively pursue a conviction and that all affected customers will be fully reimbursed for any losses they have suffered as a result of the breach.