5 Months After N450,000 Vanished From Customer’s Account, FCMB Has No Explanation

Peter Okechukwu Osogwa, a Kano-based business owner, has accused the First City Monument Bank (FCMB) of refusing to provide concrete reasons N400,000 was debited from his account without his consent.

Osogwa told FIJ that he started receiving multiple debits on the evening of March 23. He also said that the sum was debited in tranches from his account.

“On March 23, I just started receiving alerts. I received a debit alert of N200,000 first, and then another N100,000. Thereafter, I received a debit of N50,000 three times. The remaining money in my account was N48,000, so I quickly transferred it to my access bank account,” he said.

Osogwa said he subsequently went to the bank to lodge a complaint and was told the incident would be investigated.

“They told me that they would conduct a thorough audit on the transactions to know what happened,” he said.

“Later, an official of the bank suggested to me that the fraud might have happened because I bought something using my line. He also suggested that a fraudster might have tracked my ATM online. I was surprised because I never knew money could be swiped from people’s account online without a password or the receipt of an OTP.”

Osogwa said every time he emailed the bank, they told him the incident was still under investigation.

“I even went to the CBN to file a complaint, but so far, nothing has been done on my request. Another thing is that, when I rushed to the bank the period the incident happened, the officials confirmed to me that the amount was fraudulently taken from my account. They also told me they had placed a restriction on the account to stop the money from leaving,” said Osogwa.

The business owner said that although the FCMB refused to tell him where the money was, he discovered that it had been transferred to a SportyBet account.

 Several phone calls to the FCMB for comments, but they were not answered. An email sent to them had also not been responded to at press time.

(C)FIJ