In what must surely be one of the most embarrassing cases of identity theft to date, the chairman of UK high-street banking titan Barclays has had £10,000 stolen from his Barclays personal bank account, reports the Times.
Marcus Agius, who became Barclays chairman last January, lost the money after a con man exploited weaknesses in the bank’s call centre processes and convinced the operator to issue a new card in Agius’s name. The con man was then able to walk into a branch of Barclays and withdraw £10,000 of the chairman’s savings, the Times reveals.
Agius, who takes home £800,000 a year plus bonuses, has been fully reimbursed under the bank’s 100% fraud guarantee, says Barclays.
The watchdog found that inadequate systems and controls at the insurer’s call centres allowed fraudsters to obtain sensitive customer details, including confidential records such as addresses and bank details.
The fraudsters then used the information to successfully impersonate 74 customers and cash in their policies, worth £3.3 million in total.
Unlike financial fraud, in which money is simply siphoned out of people’s accounts using electronic means or a stolen or cloned credit or debit card, identity theft involves the impersonation of an individual and the exploitation of their financial identity.
The strategy is often more damaging for the victim in question than fraud or financial theft, because it compromises the individual’s ability to function financially in the long term.
It can prove more profitable for the fraudster, however, because extremely large sums of money – for example in the form of loans – can be procured in another person’s identity. Repayments can then be defaulted upon with impunity. The victim, however, is left to pick up the tab.
Identity theft is rapidly becoming one of the most challenging problems for organisations that issue accounts of any nature, as well as credit and loan issuers.
CIFAS, the Fraud Prevention Service, reports that over 40,000 identity scams were committed in 2007.
Further reading
Norwich Union fined for ID theft
Lord Erroll: HMRC breach a "godsend"
McAfee: Cyber-espionage resource drain
MI5: E-espionage resource drain
HMRC breach sparks finance fears
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