Hyderabad–A phone banking officer of ICICI Bank here has been arrested for hacking the bank account of a Canadian customer and fraudulently withdrawing over Rs.32 lakh ($60,000) from his account.

Cyberabad police took into custody Bijjala Raghu Kishore Reddy, an employee of the ICICI Bank International Banking Group call centre, who allegedly opened a fake account in connivance with another person and hacked into the ICICI Bank account of Pierre Courtot of Canada.

Kishore Reddy then allegedly transferred Rs.32,09,819 from Courtot’s account and withdrew the same from different ATMs, said Cyberabad’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) S. Ranga Reddy.
Police are on the lookout for second accused, Chimili Srinivas, an employee of Narayana Educational Group.

Roopesh Trivedi, additional general manager, phone banking division at the Hyderabad ICICI head office, lodged a complaint with police after Courtot informed them about unauthorized transactions of Canadian $61,451.48 from his account.

Investigations revealed that 27-year-old Kishore Reddy, a resident of Visakhapatnam, had attended the customer’s calls and reportedly hacked into his account and defrauded him.
The accused used part of the money to buy land, gold ornaments, mobile phones and other items.

Police seized Rs.3.25 lakh in cash, gold ornaments worth Rs.4 lakh, a demand draft for Rs.4 lakh, two mobile phones and documents from Kishore Reddy.–IANS