Indian Call Center Employees Hack US Bank Accounts

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."

Comments

Re:crores

[romit_icarus]

It's just a different way of grouping of decimal places. In India it's common to have them group two decimal places instead of three. Get a better description here: http://www.answers.com/topic/indian-numbering-syst em Globalisation is however making indians, albeit reluctantly, shift to the million/billion system, but it'll take time...

Re:crores

[kaalamaadan]

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

[csjavi]

I think it's worth pointing out that they were apparently caught in the act, so it's not like Citibank was standing by idly and not noticing.

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The customers, from whose accounts the money had been withdrawn, alerted the bank officials in the US, after which the crime was traced to Pune.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.

Well that explains a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

I own a a company in Europe and part of one in ****.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this particular sort of naive fraud is unlikely to repeated for a while at Citibank, Citibank has a history of association with much more sophisticated and serious fraudulent activity. I refer to Citibank's crucial role in suggesting, creating, structuring, and maintaining the complex banking and hedging schemes for both Enron and WorldCom. Forget the Enron and WorldCom directors for a moment. The Citibank directors who were involved should be held accountable for their contribution to the frauds and yet they have all somehow managed to evade proper censure; indeed they still hold company office - that's absolutely not right. The SEC and AG have done nothing with any of them. Let's avoid using Citibank and let's see why they they get away with their activities...

Some background on Citibank's unresolved history of association with serious fraud:

here
and
here

Re:Or interfering with the democratic process

[badfish99]

Mind you, piracy in the UK had the death penalty as recently as 1998, although it was abolished for murder in 1969. See History of Capital Punishment

Re:It's all relative...

[PureCreditor]

Try Turkey's *old* Lira - TRL -

1 USD = 1.35million TRL

so 350,000TRL = 26 cents

Re:It's not that simple...

[Mattintosh]

You missed the point. Let me help you out a bit.

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.