Business banking news review: week ending 20 Feb 2014
This week saw the unbelievable revelation that not one but two Barclays employees – at different branches – have been involved in some major fraud scandals.
I don’t know what it is about the way Barclays hires cashier staff, but apparently someone’s been letting the side down because there’s been so much bloody fraud lately. First up this week was the report of how Portuguese national Victor Sampaio Ferreira had been paying off his credit card bill by stealing from what he thought were dormant savings accounts held by countrymen.
Ferreira had apparently been doing this for quite some time – years in fact. He was only caught this year after someone finally complained to Barclays about the issue. At that point at least £12,000 in other people’s money had been pilfered by the 24 year old, who to his credit admitted his guilt. I suppose there was no weaseling out of this one, eh?
Now £12,000 is a rather large amount, but this next story will absolutely blow your mind as to how much this next instance of fraud involves. This time, Barclays personal and business bank account holders lost a total of £1 million after a an ingenious and devious group of criminals used a remote control device connected to the computer of an inside man to make away with shedloads of cash.
A specialised device was fitted to the computer of Barclays employee Duane Jean-Jacques, providing fraudsters remote access. The criminals used the computer to make more than 120 transfers, using the employee’s staff login information, making off with the cash and causing a bloody uproar – especially since around £700,000 of that cash is still out there in the aether and will probably never be seen again.
So yes, once again someone at Barclays hired a person that decided to defraud the bank yet again, this time to the tune of a cool million. Now, I know I’m not a high-powered bank executive and I don’t exactly sit on the board of a high profile High Street lender, but even I can see that Barclays needs to seriously revamp their vetting process for new employees. Perhaps ensuring that they won’t abscond with mass quantities of cash might be moved to the top of the agenda for the next crop of newly hired folks, do you think?