Funds Fraudulently Moved From a UBA Account to a Betting Account
An Aba-based businessman, Chukwudi Nmagu alleged that the sum of N800,000 was fraudulently converted from his United Bank for Africa (UBA) account to a betting account.
According to Nmagu, on August 18, 2023, one of his clients transferred the sum of N980,000 for a business deal to his UBA account. He said he only withdrew a total of N120,000 for expenses from the money.
Nmagu, disclosed to Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) that on 19th August, despite having no involvement in sports betting and his phone switched off, someone from another location managed to withdraw the sum of N8000,000 from his account into an MSport betting wallet without having access to a one-time-password as required by banks.
Recounting his incident, Nmagu reported that the N800,000 was withdrawn from his account in five separate debit transactions on August 19: N200,000, N250,000, N200,000, N250,000 and N100,000, all occurring after 2:34 am, using x919# code.
The culprit made a deposit of one naira into the account, possibly to check the account balance after much withdrawals. Afterwards they abandoned the account leaving a balnce of N73,000. They used an MSport account to execute these transactions,” Nmagu disclosed to FIJ.
Immediately after discovering the fraudulent activity, Nmagu contacted UBA’s customer care and urgently requested that they block his account to prevent further unauthorised access.
Nmagu also sent an email to UBA which they acknowledged.
The incident took place over the weekend, so Nmagu waited until August 22 before visiting the UBA branch at Aba’s main location on Factory Road. The bank provided him with an incident report form to complete and to give them time to investigate.
In an email, the bank assured Nmagu that they were looking into the matter and for him to wait until September 6. Afterwards, the bank extended the timeline to September 12 in a separate email.
However, according to Nmagu he is yet to receive his missing funds or any form of resolution from the bank.
When FIJ reached out to UBA for comments on the issue, a bank representative asked for the location where the complaint was lodged but did not respond to other inquiries.
As of the time of this report, the bank had not provided any further response to the reporter’s follow-up email.
Source: https://fij.ng/
