A scam of Oceans 11 proportions led to UK Barclays Bank high-profile chairman being impersonated and having £10,000 stripped out of his account British media reported last week.

The embarrassing episode was a reminder that identity theft is still a huge problem and not just something resulting from having a household bill stolen from your garbage bin.

Barclays Bank chairman, Marcus Agius, was duped after a call centre worker for the bank issued a card in his name to a fraudster.

The swindle was carried out after the conman entered a Barclay’s branch armed with the card and a series of readily available personal information on Mr. Aguis.

The estimated cost of ever more elaborate methods of identity fraud is estimated to cost the industry more than £1.5 billion a year.

Last year burningpants reported on the high incidence of skimming in the UK, the art of attaching an alien device to ATM machines with the aim of capturing sensitive electronic information from bank cards.

While the Barclays incident was highly embarrassing for the group it did little to put a dent in Mr. Aguis’ bank account considering he was swiftly reimbursed and currently commands a yearly salary of £800,000 from the bank.