Queeneth Onyema, a Port Harcourt resident, woke up on August 2 to a shocking revelation that the N2,100,582 savings she had with the United Bank for Africa (UBA) had suddenly vanished from her account, despite not carrying out a single transaction.

Onyema told FIJ she fell into a deeper shock when a UBA call representative from Lagos told her all the money in her account “was used to purchase airtime for different mobile numbers”.

She said she approached the operational manager at the UBA Woji YKC Branch the following day and was told that fraudsters had used “an old phone number of hers that was previously linked to her account to activate her savings”.

“The manager said that the fraudsters used my old MTN line, formerly linked to my account, to activate my savings on the UBA mobile app before defrauding me,” Onyema told FIJ.

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Onyema said she had changed the number in March at one of the bank’s branches after it was barred in March.

“After MTN barred the number, I had visited one of the bank’s branches on Refinery Road, Eleme, on March 24 to change it. They gave me a form to fill out and, since then, I have been receiving alerts on the new phone number,” she said.

“So, I am shocked to hear that fraudsters had used the old number to activate my account on the mobile app. It is even worse to know that an old number that ought to have been deactivated by the bank is still linked to my account, despite filling out change of data forms in March.”

Onyema said she went back to the branch at Refinery Road on August 4 and demanded to know why the old phone number that ought to have been deactivated was still active.

“I was prevented from speaking to the branch manager when I got to the branch. They referred me instead to their customer service team,” she said.

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Onyema said she narrated the fraud that had occurred on her account to the customer service team and they told her to wait till August 17 for a feedback.

“After I left the bank, I went straight to the police station at Akpajo to lodge a complaint on the issue. As I was leaving the police station, I got a refund of N35,000. I told the DPO, but he asked me to wait and see if the refund would continue till August 17,” she said.

When her lawyer wrote to UBA’s head office on the issue, they asked him to wait till August 19.

“But, till we speak, UBA has said nothing about my money. Even when my lawyer wrote a notice of reminder to the bank, they failed to respond,” she said.

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According to Onyema, the police would later summon the bank manager of the UBA branch on Refinery Road and the customer representative who assisted while making the data change request on August 23.

“The police told me to come back on August 26. But on the same day, the police again told me via a phone call that the meeting would no longer hold,” she said.

“I have exhausted all available resources in trying to get my money back. Unfortunately, all my efforts have yielded no fruit. I now borrow to sustain myself.”

FIJ sent an email to UBA for comments on the issue but it had not been responded to at press time.