Wachovia Corp., and Bank of America Corp. say they have notified
> more th an 100,000 customers that their accounts and personal
> information may be at risk after former bank employees allegedly
> sold account numbers and balances to a man who then sold them to
> data collection agencies. Nine people have been arrested in New
> Jersey in the case.
At one time bank employees were held to be pillars of the community. They were treated as professionals and acted as professionals. It was rare to have one go bad.
Even big city banks tended to be community oriented operations. Most employees intermixed in person with the customers they served.
Further, banks had elaborate systems of accounting and auditing controls.
Unfortunately, today many accounting controls are gone. The people who loaded up an ATM every day kept whatever cash was left over because no one bothered to audit it, for example.
Also, banks today are huge anonymous empires. Many employees work in "boiler rooms", under pressure to sell profitable new banking products like stocks and insurance yet meet a tough quota of customers served per day. The computer watches every transaction and break.
These modern employees, often dealing with disgruntled customers over the phone, have little incentive to be loyal. Thus, there is greater temptation, esp when the theft is of non-cash items. (Most of us would not pry open a vending machine to steal a candy bar, but if the vending machine malfunctioned and served it for free, nobody would pay for it. The man who services the machines where I work found that out the hard way.)
Cash and money can be audited and controlled. Secret information like personal records can be lifted easily.
I don't think much of these 'boiler room' customer service operations. As a customer, I find them maddeningly frustrating to deal with.