Tope Aregbesola, an Abuja-based civil servant, has narrated how a fraudster he thought was a UBA official stole N700,000 from his UBA account.

Aregbesola told FIJ that the incident happened in November 2022, while he was trying to increase his mobile banking transfer limit because he needed to purchase an item online.

“While trying to purchase the item, I figured I needed to increase my transfer limit from N500,000 to a higher amount,” Aregbesola said.

“But because work would not permit me to physically visit a UBA branch, I reached out to them via their official Twitter handle and stated my request.

“Later, I got a response from the comment section that I should chat with a WhatsApp number for a ‘quick resolution’.

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“While chatting with the WhatsApp line, the fellow at the other end introduced himself as a UBA official and requested for my account details. After I gave him the details, he claimed the matter would be resolved in no time and further requested for the One Time Passwords (OTPs) that I subsequently received. All the while, he pretended to be working on my account from his end.

“After I had supplied him with all the OTPs I received, the first thing I noticed was that a notification of N500,000 debit entered my phone. The next request the fraudster would make was that I sent him my account balance. This was when I realised that something was wrong, so I did not respond to him.

“After a while, I received another N200,000 debit alert. It then dawned on me that I had been dealing with a fraudster. The N200,000 he stole went into the account of one Oludare Samuel. I eventually visited a UBA branch around Abuja and had the account blocked.”

Aregbesola said he was asked to fill a complaint form at the branch and was also told that there would be a resolution after two weeks.

“When I did not hear from them after two weeks as they promised, I sent them a mail and copied the FCCPC and the CBN,” Aregbesola said.

“It was at this point that UBA’s anti-fraud desk responded. In their response, they said I voluntarily gave out my account details and that there was nothing they could do about it in terms of recovering the funds.

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“What are you doing to prevent a re-occurrence? You can’t just say it is not your fault and end the discussion there.

“A week after my experience, another person who also operates an account with UBA lost N1 million the same way.”

The number the fraudster used was 08022627204, and when FIJ checked for its owner on Truecaller, the name ‘UBA Complain’ appeared.

FIJ sent a mail to UBA’s customer care desk for comments on the matter on December 31, 2022, but it had not been responded to at press time.