Indian Call Center Employees Hack US Bank Accounts 550
The Ascended One writes "Call center employees working for an Indian software company, MSource, supposedly used confidential client information to transfer client funds to themselves. The alleged perpetrators used the personal information of four NY-based clients to transfer ~$350,000 (Rs. 1.5 crores) in their names, a large sum in Indian currency. They were caught after the victims alerted the bank officials in the US, who then traced the crime to the Indian city of Pune. While the name of the bank has not been revealed, the article indicates that the bank in question is Citibank."
Re:Easier to track (Score:1, Informative)
Re:crores (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easier to track (Score:0, Informative)
Citibank has been the target of many phishing scams and e-mail frauds lately and now this. It will be a cold day in hell before any of my assets are at Citibank!
Re:crores (Score:5, Informative)
The system is the, afaik, British/European.
The Least significant 3 digits are grouped together, then it is in groups of two digits each.
For example, 3000000 in American notation is: 3,000,000 [3 million] and in the Indian system is 30,00,000 [30 lakhs].
Also, the commonly used powers of 10 include:
1 lakh - 1/10ths of a million
and
1 crore - 10 millions.
Re:Easier to track (Score:3, Informative)
Did you RTFA which says:
The customers, from whose accounts the money had been withdrawn, alerted the bank officials in the US, after which the crime was traced to Pune.
So, the bank didn't notice anything, the customers did.
Once bitten (Score:1, Informative)
Well that explains a lot (Score:3, Informative)
I ordered products from the **** company and transfered the money to them from Citibank by telephone banking.
I had a call back from Citibank, an 'anti-money laundering' call to check the purpose of the money transfer requesting the telephone number of the **** company to receive the money.
A day later the ***** company receives a call asking for wholesale pricing information from a Indian company that competes with me to the FINANCIAL CONTROLLERS telephone number, not the usual secretaries number.
How did they get that number?
What's wrong with the heart of Citibank? Read on (Score:5, Informative)
Some background on Citibank's unresolved history of association with serious fraud:
here [bbc.co.uk]
and
here [google.com]
Re:Begin the racist rants (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Or interfering with the democratic process (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Indian, Native American, Ukrainian, Nigerian (Score:2, Informative)
While this is true, and while I agree with your general sentiment, it doesn't address the core problem here.
And that problem is that by outsourcing anything, whether it's to an entity in the same country or to an entity in a different country, you are intentionally throwing away control over the process in question.
It's important to ask whether or not the process being outsourced is a required part of the business. If it is, then it's probably something that can't be trusted to an outside entity. And if it's not, then perhaps one should consider ditching it entirely.
IT, for instance, is a required part of most businesses these days. While IT itself may not be what the company in question specializes, in, most companies would be insane to outsource their IT operations, because the consequences to the company of their IT processes being implemented poorly can be very high indeed. It's reasonable to get additional help via contractors and such, but only when there's direct oversight of the contractors by employees of the company.
This is why I tend to be against the notion of outsourcing business processes of any kind -- it's a dangerous, foolish thing to do. Any business process that is a reasonable candidate for outsourcing is likely to also be a reasonable candidate for dropping entirely.
Now, how does this relate to the original article? Simple: if the bank in question had kept the call center an in-house operation, they would have had direct control over the security procedures used to maintain customer confidentiality. By outsourcing, they intentionally chose to relinquish control over everything involved in running a call center (which includes how sensitive information is handled) to the company they outsourced their call center operations to. Now their customers are suffering the consequences.
Re:It's all relative... (Score:4, Informative)
1 USD = 1.35million TRL
so 350,000TRL = 26 cents
Re:Attention Citibank Customer (Score:3, Informative)
Check the source of the page.
document.location = "moron.htm"
It DOES NOT do a post to anywhere, and therefore I can't collect any info.
Re:It's not that simple... (Score:1, Informative)
1) India is pissed at the US cause the USA is allowing Pakistan to buy fighter planes, and because the US is trying to prevent India from building an oil pipeline from Iraq to India (hey, that's Halliburton's job)
2) 10% of Indians are Moslems. That's over 100 million, which isn't trivial. After 911, that frightens me.
Re:It's not that simple... (Score:5, Informative)
Main Entry: sarcasm
Pronunciation: 'sär-"ka-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: French or Late Latin; French sarcasme, from Late Latin sarcasmos, from Greek sarkasmos, from sarkazein to tear flesh, bite the lips in rage, sneer, from sark-, sarx flesh; probably akin to Avestan thwar&s- to cut
1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain
2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual b : the use or language of sarcasm
synonym see WIT
All the crimes he mentioned were done by American citizens. Bombing federal buildings? McVeigh. Mailing bombs to universities? Kaczynski. Sniping people in Washington DC? Malvo. At least two of them thought they were fighting for their country, which they (somewhat correctly) saw as having been overrun by greedy corporate/big government idiots. I'm pretty sure Malvo was just getting a kick out of killing people.
In light of these examples, the "War on Terror" looks like a silly, yet all-too-serious, grab for power. In other words, I think you're preaching to the choir.
Re:Indian, Native American, Ukrainian, Nigerian (Score:2, Informative)
You're bark ing up the wrong tree with that one. With so many shady characters on Slashdot, you're bound to find one with roots in the heart of the problem. Then again, if you're lucky you might find one with a deciduous personality who won't needle you about it.
Re:Well that explains a lot (Score:1, Informative)
So its not a blind call.
Re:Just a matter of time (Score:3, Informative)
Do you even know what you area talking about? Call center workers are not 'poor slaves'... they make more money than the average Indian, and have better working conditions. Heck, please do get out of your well and learn more about the world around you.
Re:Pot calling the kettle... (Score:2, Informative)