Stanbic IBTC Bank Loses N576,664,517 To Cybercriminals Over Internal Bank Security Breach

The court filing had the Inspector General of Police as the applicant seeking four substantive reliefs while the 37 financial institutions hosting the beneficiaries’ accounts were the respondents.

Filed by Enang, a legal practitioner for the police, the police’s application to freeze those accounts was supported by an affidavit sworn to by Sunday Ubanni, a superintendent of police at the PSFU.

Through a certified true copy of the ex-parte order, Justice Alexander Oluseyi Owoeye empowered the banks to place a post-no-debit on the affected account numbers.

The judge equally empowered the police to arrest any person linked to the suspected accounts for a period of three months.

“That an order of this Honourable Court is hereby granted to the applicant directing the placing of Lien/Post No Debit, arrest upon sighting of anybody operating the under listed accounts domiciled with the Respondents for the period of 90 days that were used to perpetrate fraud against the victims in the case pending conclusion of police investigation,” the first leg of the court order read.

The other legs of the order included a directive to the banks to release the account opening packages of the suspects and their personally identifiable information, statements of account, handing over of the account holders and the reversal of the suspicious funds.

“That an order is hereby granted to the applicant, directing the 1st- 37th respondents’ banks to furnish the Police Investigating Officers with Certified True Copies (CTC) of the following information/documents on the accounts: Certified True Copies of Account Opening Package, Statement of account from 1/1/2023 till date, BVN linked to the accounts and Mandate Cards; telephone numbers receiving alert; post-no-debit on the accounts; certificate of computer printout in compliance with Section 84 of the Evidence Act,” the court ordered.

“That an Order of this Honourable Court is hereby granted to the Applicant directing the 1st. 37th Respondents’ Banks to cause the arrest and handing over the account holders or their representatives to any law enforcement agency within the 1st-37th Respondents’ banking premises.

“That an Order of this Honourable Court is hereby granted to the Applicant directing the Defendants’ banks with account numbers as stated above to reverse/transfer the sum of N576,664,517.50 (Five Hundred and Seventy Six Million, Six Hundred and Sixty Four Thousand, Five Hundred and Seven Naira Fifty Kobo) or whatever is left of the sum fraudulently transferred into the accounts of the Defendants as stated above and which are in the Defendants’ banks and that all sum or whatever is left of the sum in the said accounts be transferred bank to the victims accounts, with account name: Special Reserved Account, account number 9200026167, bank name: Stanbic IBTC, the nominal complainant.”

Alokpesi C.N. signed the certified true copy of the order. The case comes up next on May 28 for report of the police investigation.

When contacted for comments, Ovie Kenneth, the spokesperson for the PSFU, promised to find out and revert to FIJ with feedback.

Given that investigations are still ongoing, FIJ cannot share a complete copy of the ex-parte order publicly available.

A CUSTOMER’S N14.1 MILLION IS FLAGGED AS FRAUDULENT

Ogundele Taofeek, a cryptocurrency trader, was one of the persons whose accounts was suspected to have received a part of the stolen funds.

On January 29, Taofeek completed a transaction with Barnabas Nnabuike Nwgu, a Parallex Bank and Zenith Bank customer. He received N14,100,000 in total through his Kuda and OPay wallets in fulfilment of the cryptocurrency deal.

The transaction was without glitches and he had no idea where Ngwu got the money for the transaction from.

Some hours later, Taofeek’s peace was disturbed when he got separate notifications from Kuda and OPay that the funds had been flagged as fraudulent.

“I received the payment in batches: N3,000,000, N3,000,000, N3,000,000, N500,000 to my Kuda Bank from his Zenith Bank account and N4,600,000 from his Parallex Bank to my OPay account. The payment was successfully credited to my bank account without any issues at the time of receipt,” Taofeek told FIJ on Tuesday.

“Hours later, Kuda notified me that a lien had been placed on the N9.5 million in my account and another message from OPay claiming that I received an erroneous transfer of N4.6 million. I immediately contacted the banks for clarification. After thorough questioning, I was informed that the payments I received were linked to a Stanbic IBTC Bank glitch, a matter of which I had no prior knowledge or involvement.”