Credit card racket busted in Lucknow (India)

[WhiteTara]

are you alarmed now?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1473894.cms
LUCKNOW: A major credit card cloning racket that carried out transactions totalling Rs.35 million over 18 days in the Uttar Pradesh capital was busted by police on Sunday.

Some cloned and misused credit cards used by the group behind the racket were traced to foreign nationals who had not even visited India during the period the transactions were made.

A team of officials of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) have arrested three people from the office of Lucky Travels that has its headquarters in New Delhi.

say it with me "We love outsourcing"

[brentspeak]

1. With all those accounting and customer service jobs sent to India

The American people's financial and personal info will be floating all around India, just ripe for a lot more of these fraud schemes.

[ikojo]

4. Not only credit card information but personal health

information...over here insurance companies and their employees are subject to HIPAA guidelines. When claims processing and customer service operations are sent overseas or to Mexico, there is no way to enforce American law especially when it comes to HIPAA.

There was an article in SF Gate about a medical transcriber in Pakistan who threatened to put patient's private health information on the Internet if she did not receive her back pay. Yes, it could have happened in the US but at least in the US there are laws to protect this information.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/22/MNGCO2FN8G1.DTL

A tough lesson on medical privacy
Pakistani transcriber threatens UCSF over back pay
David Lazarus

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

snip

A woman in Pakistan doing cut-rate clerical work for UCSF Medical Center threatened to post patients' confidential files on the Internet unless she was paid more money.To show she was serious, the woman sent UCSF an e-mail earlier this month with actual patients' records attached.

The violation of medical privacy - apparently the first of its kind - highlights the danger of "offshoring" work that involves sensitive materials, an increasing trend among budget-conscious U.S. companies and institutions.

U.S. laws maintain strict standards to protect patients' medical data. But those laws are virtually unenforceable overseas, where much of the labor- intensive transcribing of dictated medical notes to written form is being exported.

[justice1]

9. Secretary of Agriculture Johannes, outsourced to India

When he was governor of Nebraska, Mike Johannes outsourced jobs related to welfare benefits, which contained Americans private information.

Rather than going with well established U.S. company that had a lower bid, and would have employed Americans, he chose to send the jobs to India with no explanation.

[UpInArms]

2. maybe Gregory Mankiw will pipe in and tell you how happy

those people will be to spend hundred of hours and many years attempting to straighten out their credit - how that creates jobs for 'Murka

Bush Econ Advisor: Outsourcing OK

If one thing illustrates the kind of year the Bush administration has stumbled and bumbled its way through in 2004, it was the comments earlier this week by the president's chief economic adviser, Greg Mankiw.

Mankiw wrote that the movement of U.S. jobs overseas due to cheaper labor costs – "outsourcing" he dubbed it in a remarkable display of political tone deafness – would prove "a plus for the economy in the long run," and was simply "a new way of doing international trade."

Mankiw's assertion – certainly sound economic theory and something that would play well at, say, a Harvard graduate school lecture – illustrates the political ineptitude the White House has exhibited in recent weeks that threatens its prospects for a second term unless things change course, and soon.

...more...

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. I don't give a shit. I'm getting mangoes.

:sarcasm:

[magellan]

5. Maybe I'm off on the wrong tangent

...but what scares me even more about this is WHO the information might be sold to. 12% of India's population is Muslim and it shares an uneasy border with Pakistan....

Identity theft and fraud are frightening enough without having to worry if your ID/money might be turned over to the highest bidder -- and in that part of the world it could easily be a terrorist group.

[Canuckistanian]

6. And considering how popular America is in India today...

They won't have any hesitation in stealing from all those "rich Americans".

[NYC]

7. Photocopies of passports...

...Most of the fake transactions were made for purchasing international air tickets in the name of foreign nationals, photocopies of whose passports were used for the mandatory photo confirmation of high value dealings...

[lovuian]

8. Yep I hope they end up screwing every company they work for

It will make my day to see the credit card companies banks all of them ending up paying more than they gained for Security issues blown...

[AnneD]

10. It was just a matter of time...

If there is one thing India is know for, it is bribery and corruption...at all levels. Hubby got shook down coming in and I got shook down leaving by customs agents at the airport. You can't even get any basic services started without paying bribes. And these companies are so naive as to think this information won't be used in some scam???? Might as well open a call center in Nigeria.

[tenshi816]

11. Too right.

We took extra money to India for the express purpose of bribes because every guidebook recommended it. It was impossible to get anything done without it, even something as simple as buying a train ticket. We also slept with our passports under our pillows and kept them secure during the day (I actually used to carry mine stashed inside my bra).

[lovuian]

12. Corruption is what mires India's company but ya have to think

companies like to bribe people when they whole mantra is money ...they feel like they can work with these people... problem is sometimes the guy you bribe screws you... thats what outsourcing is going to be the greatest fiasco American companies ever did...

I'm like a Cheshire cat waiting for it to happen...