Oluwatobiloba Adekale, a Lagos-based teacher, has narrated how a fraudster posing as an agent of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) defrauded him of N353,500.

Adekale said that the scammer identified his problem and recommended steps for him to take, which panned out fine but for a short time.

He told FIJ he received a credit alert of N364,000 on March 2 but could neither transfer nor withdraw the money because his account status had not been upgraded.

Frustrated, he contacted the UBA via all available means of communication but got no response.

The following day, Adekale said, he contacted the bank via an Instagram direct message but got no response. He also contacted the bank on Twitter, and it was not successful either.

READ ALSO: 2 Months After the First, UBA Customer Loses Entire Savings to Scammer Again

“I chatted with Leo, UBA’s bot, but that did not help either. So, I went back on Twitter and commented on a post by the UBA official page, asking them to reply to my DM,” Adekale told FIJ.

“Just after I did that, a fake, verified UBA account replied to me. I could not even distinguish between the original and the account that messaged me. The handler of the page contacted me and sent a WhatsApp link via DM, telling me to reply via the link.”

He said he chatted with the scammer on WhatsApp via the number he got from the fake Twitter page, thinking he was chatting with a customer care representative.

Adekale said the scammer sent him a form to fill out, which he did. The scammer then asked him what the problem was, which he also explained.

“After I told him the issue with my account, he asked me to fill out an online form. He said I would get a one-time password and would have to paste it while filling out the form. The first time, the form did not work, so I sent him the one-time password,” said Adekale.

He said the scammer told him his account was under restriction and gave him the documents he should take to the bank with him.

“And since my money was still intact, there was no way for me to know he was a scammer,” he said.

Adekale said he went to a UBA branch on March 6 to upgrade the status of his account from a student account to a standard savings account and it was successful.

READ ALSO: After FIJ’s Story, UBA Refunds Strange Deduction From Customer’s Money

 “That same Monday, I was about to transfer the money to those I owed, but I found nothing in my account. All I saw were debit alerts. When I checked my app, I found that I had been scammed,” he said.

It was then that it hit him that he had given out his details to a scammer the previous week. He said he found that the scammer had transferred the money to different Chipper Cash accounts.

“That same evening, I rushed to the bank to inform them of what happened, but they said they reported the issue to their fraud team. They told me to wait for 10 days. That was all of my savings,” he said.

“The scammer took N353,500 from my account. UBA has been slow to react. They haven’t been saying anything.”

FIJ contacted UBA via an email but the bank had not responded at press time.