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N452,000 disappeared from Ojuolape Gbolahan’s UBA account, and after investigation, UBA claimed the fault came from Gbolahan.
They ceded responsibility to him and implied that he compromised his details, which led to him being defrauded. But Gbolahan has contested this.
“Please be informed that our investigation report shows that your account was enrolled on the new mobile banking platform on 09/01/2023 with phone number *,” UBA wrote to him in an email.
He told FIJ: “Nobody has access to my ATM card. I have never divulged any of my sensitive information. I live alone. I have no siblings or wife living with me that I could have said has access to my phone, and I have been operating this app (UBA mobile banking app) all through that time.
“Is it possible to operate two mobile banking apps with the same information?”
Gbolahan is a Lagos-based artisan. The stolen N452,000 was money paid to him by a client for furniture. On March 8, he attempted a failed transfer transaction from his UBA account to his WEMA account and decided to try again the following day. But in no time, he received a succession of debit alerts totalling N452,000: N200,053, N52,107, N100,053, and N100,053.
He hurried to the bank and lodged a complaint. He also blocked his account and was asked to return in 14 days. When he finally received feedback, UBA informed him that he had compromised his credentials, and as a result was liable for his loss.
Gbolahan said he visited about five different UBA branches to ask for his bank statement reflecting the period in which the money was wiped out of his account but was denied access to it.
“They said because they blocked my account, they could not operate on it, but they gave me the report from January to February. Then I asked for the report from their investigations. They didn’t give it to me,” said Gbolahan.
It was when Gbolahan visited UBA’s Lagos head office in Marina that he was finally given access to his bank statement reflecting the March 8-March 9 period.
The bank statement showed that the money was distributed to the accounts of one Ubong Talbot, Ahmad Abdullahi and XBET, but Gbolahan was refused further information, and without the investigation report, he was left with no lead.
Meanwhile, he has yet to deliver the furniture to the client who paid him the money and the client is now on his neck to deliver as promised.
Gbolahan said he had no money to complete the project and had even met with a lawyer who told him to pay N100,000 once they recovered the money, but he cannot part with that sum.
“If I finish the client’s job, I will not even take up to N100,000 home. Where would I see that kind of money? The fraud came from UBA,” he said.
FIJ sent an email to UBA, and just as they told Gbolahan, they wrote FIJ stating that he compromised his account details and the bank was not to be held liable.
FIJ
