A customer of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), who preferred to be identified as George Braide and who has an account with the bank at the Aba Road by GRA branch in Port Harcourt, Rivers State Port Harcourt, is requesting a refund of N7 million that was digitally taken from his account within three days.
The bank customer, who preferred anonymity due to an ongoing police investigation, stated that his MTN phone line stopped working on a Saturday in early July 2022, and he went to an MTN service centre to file a complaint.
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After reporting the incident of a phone blockade at the MTN office, Braide, the 60-year-old retiree, was told that his phone had no issue that could justify the blockade, and his phone was subsequently unlocked.
Messages began to pour in after he unlocked his phone and was on his way to his car. Beginning Saturday morning, when his phone first rang, there were multiple transfers to Opay accounts, binge purchases, and various withdrawals from his account.
The climax was the transfer of N4 million from the account on Monday morning, most likely while he was at the MTN office. Between Saturday morning and Monday, N7 million was withdrawn from the account that holds his retirement benefits.
The introduction of technology, which appears to have reshaped the nation’s banking sector in order to compete with its peers around the world, has created problems and has always made it easy for money belonging to customers to disappear from their accounts.
Previously, all banks had to do was store the funds in highly secure vaults. It was always difficult for the bank robber to get in because they were guarded by a variety of metallic barriers and human guards.
That’s why they’d frequently target bank tellers or hope to march the branch manager to the vault. Even here, banks frequently took steps to make it a difficult task.
All of that has changed in the digital era, as criminals can breach financial institutions’ computer systems to access the digital equivalents of the good, old vaults and move large sums of money that would have made the old bank robbers envious.
Then he began to wonder if something had gone wrong with his phone line’s connection to his national identity number, causing it to be suspended, as he had heard other people complain about.
The incentive for immediate rectification was lacking because he could continue to use WhatsApp to make calls and contact people. So he put off going to an MTN office until early Monday morning to find out what was wrong with his phone line.
Source: The Nigeria Lawyers
