Jegede Akinyosoye Daniel and Idowu Abiodun, a Lagos-based couple, have narrated how N16,000 and N2,057,501 disappeared from their United Bank of Africa (UBA) accounts respectively.

Abiodun told FIJ that the monies were deducted after a robbery incident that took place along Airport Road, Ikeja Lagos, on July 31.

“In the early hours of Saturday 30th July 2022, a robbery took place along Airport Road, Lagos, in which mobile phones were stolen from my husband,” Abiodun said.

“I would like a full investigation into exactly how the sum of N16,000 was able to be taken from my husband’s savings account and the total of N2,057,501.15 was taken from mine with so many transfers of between N9,000 and N10,000 to various accounts that I know nothing about.”

While recounting the incident, Abiodun told FIJ that she had tried to dispute every transaction on her account but the debit alerts had not stopped coming.

“I tried selecting ‘Transaction not carried out by me’, but an error message kept showing, saying ‘Properties not found’ on the UBA app,” she said.

“I also put in a call to the customer care but the line cut off before I could go further, so nothing was possible to be investigated, which was not helpful at all.

“Now I’m left with a balance of just N21.15, which is extremely heartbreaking.”

“I do feel that a significant alert should have been raised, especially on my email or UBA mobile banking app, considering the volume of transactions done, especially as I had never made such large volumes of transactions to different accounts in my entire banking history with UBA,” Abiodun said. 

Daniel told FIJ that they (the couple) reached out to UBA via a Twitter message after his efforts to send emails to the bank proved fruitless. He said he learned that their accounts had been frozen and their debit cards blocked.

When contacted, UBA told FIJ an investigation was on and results would be out by August 15.

“I am simply perplexed at how such a high standard bank such as UBA can allow criminals to get away with making over 50+ transactions in such a small space of time from our savings account with no security alerts to the customer or blocks due to the volume of transactions from a single account,” Daniel said.

The couple told FIJ that a police report had been filed at the Ikeja police station about the incident.