CNN-IBN

Bangalore, Jun 27: India’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) hub has been hit by a scandal.

Twenty customers of HSBC in London have been allegedly defrauded of their money, from the bank's Indian backend in India’s silicon valley.

Money, amounting to about £ 2,33,000 (Rs 1,51,45,000) was allegedly transferred from their accounts between March and May this year through ATM, debit card and telephone banking services.

Nadeem Kashmiri, an employee of HSBC's BPO operations in Bangalore, has been charged with accessing personal, security and debit card information of the customers and siphoning off the money.

The fraud came to light after nearly 20 HSBC customers in the UK lodged a complaint with the bank stating that the money lying in their account had been transferred without their knowledge between March and May this year.

They also said that they did not know who transferred it.

After the bank conducted an internal inquiry into the incident, the backend system logs indicated Kashmiri was involved. He was caught and arrested.

In an FIR lodged with the Cyber Crime Police Station, the bank officials have alleged that Nadeem joined HSBC with the intention to deceive and cheat the bank and its customers.

The crime has been registered under Section 66 and 72 of the Information Technology Act read with 408, 468 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code.

This is the third instance of theft in BPOs. In June, a Gurgaon-based call centre employee was charged with selling confidential data.

In April 2005, five employees of the BPO arm of Mphasis were arrested for defrauding four New York-based Citibank accounts.