A programmer at a Ukrainian bank made use of his access to customer details to steal over $45,000 from accounts. The 23-year-old Dnepropetrovsk resident has already been detained by police.
The insider used his position in the bank to gain access to clients' accounts and illegally transferred money from one account into another he had set up especially for the purpose. Later, the criminal cashed a sum of over $45,000 in local currency.
The employee is currently in custody and a criminal investigation is underway. He faces theft, appropriation of computerized information for fraudulent purposes and abuse of office charges, which carry a sentence of 2-5 years in prison.
Insiders currently pose one of the most serious security problems to the banking sector. At the beginning of this year three employees from the Bank of America, Wells Fargo Bank and Nevada State Bank went on trial for the theft and further sale of client details. As a result those banks lost more than $300,000.
In mid-2005 media attention was focused on the case of a similar criminal group which contained seven bank insiders. On that occasion four of America's biggest banks were the victims. Wachovia, Bank of America, Commerce Bancorp and PNC Bank lost several million dollars and the insiders managed to sell confidential information of over 500,000 bank clients.
An even more dangerous threat is an insider who starts working in a bank following the specific orders of an organized crime group. Cases involving insiders of this nature are constantly growing and British law enforcement agencies even warned the banking system about the risks at the end of 2005.
"Insiders pose the most dangerous threat to banks. They can send the account details of a client to the wrong address, publish them on the Internet, sell private client records to criminals or even steal money themselves. The Ukrainian insider opted for the latter course. And regardless of the minor sum involved – in the region of $45,000 – the bank will definitely feel the effects on its reputation. Any leak involving an insider is always bad for a company's image," explains Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch.
Source: SecurityLab
