Pune Citibank Mphasis Call Center Fraud

US $ 3,50,000 from accounts of four US customers were dishonestly transferred to bogus accounts. This will give a lot of ammunition to those lobbying against outsourcing in US. Such cases happen all over the world but when it happens in India it is a serious matter and we can not ignore it. It is a case of sourcing engineering. Some employees gained the confidence of the customer and obtained their PIN numbers to commit fraud. They got these under the guise of helping the customers out of difficult situations. Highest security prevails in the call centers in India as they know that they will lose their business. There was not as much of breach of security but of sourcing engineering.

The call center employees are checked when they go in and out so they can not copy down numbers and therefore they could not have noted these down. They must have remembered these numbers, gone out immediately to a cyber café and accessed the Citibank accounts of the customers.

All accounts were opened in Pune and the customers complained that the money from their accounts was transferred to Pune accounts and that’s how the criminals were traced. Police has been able to prove the honesty of the call center and has frozen the accounts where the money was transferred.

There is need for a strict background check of the call center executives. However, best of background checks can not eliminate the bad elements from coming in and breaching security. We must still ensure such checks when a person is hired. There is need for a national ID and a national data base where a name can be referred to. In this case preliminary investigations do not reveal that the criminals had any crime history. Customer education is very important so customers do not get taken for a ride. Most banks are guilt of not doing this.



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  2. Andhra Pradesh Tax Case
  3. Parliament Attack Case
  4. SMC Pneumatics (India) Pvt. Ltd. v. Jogesh Kwatra
  5. The Bank NSP Case
  6. SONY.SAMBANDH.COM Case
  7. State of Tamil Nadu Vs Suhas Katti
  8. Nasscom vs. Ajay Sood & Others
  9. Bazee.com case
  10. Pune Citibank MphasiS Call Center Fraud

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