Details of 27,000 people who consulted bank’s advisers were allegedly copied from database to be sold on to rogue traders

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

An investigation is under way after confidential files relating to customers of Barclays Bank were allegedly stolen and sold on to rogue City traders.

The Mail on Sunday said highly sensitive information including customers’ earnings, savings, mortgages, health issues and insurance policies ended up in the hands of unscrupulous brokers.

The leak was exposed by an anonymous whistleblower who passed the newspaper a memory stick containing files on 2,000 of the bank’s customers, the paper said. He claimed it was a sample from a stolen database of up to 27,000 files, which he said could be sold by for up to £50 per file.

Each report was about 20 pages long and among the victims were doctors, businesspeople, scientists, a musician and a cleaner, the newspaper said. All had sought financial advice from the bank and passed on their details during meetings with an adviser.

Select traders were given the “Barclays leads”, the newspaper said, and from December 2012 to September 2013 a number of victims were persuaded to buy rare earth metals that did not exist, it is claimed.

The whistleblower estimated there were up to 1,000 victims of scams.

A Barclays spokeswoman said: “We are grateful to the Mail on Sunday for bringing this to our attention and we contacted the information commissioner and other regulators on Friday as soon as we were made aware.

“Our initial investigations suggest this is isolated to customers linked to our Barclays financial planning business which we ceased operating as a service in 2011.

“We will take all necessary steps to contact and advise those customers as soon as possible so that they can also ensure the safety of their personal data.”

A source at the bank said it had not yet verified that the memory stick contained 2,000 files, how much information was in them,or the figure of 27,000 files involved altogether.

A spokesman for the information commissioner’s Office said it was seeking further details and working with police on the case. City of London police had no information on the case.