Ngozi Njoku, a Lagos-based trader, has accused a staff member of the Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) branch in Egbe, Lagos, of defrauding her under the guise of helping her.
Njoku also accused the bank of shielding the employee whose name she did not know.
She told FIJ that she went to the branch on March 18 to upgrade her account’s daily transfer limit. After she explained why she was there, a male staffer asked her to use the bank app.
Seeing she could not use the app, Njoku said the staffer asked for her card and pin to help her set up an account on the app. He did it successfully, and she left for her house.
“But the following morning, I woke up to four debit alert messages totalling N600,000. What I saw surprised me, as nothing of the sort had happened before. I knew it had something to do with registering the app and with the man who helped me,” she told FIJ.
“I did not use the application to do any transactions after I left the bank. He told me the app would only work after 24 hours. They transferred my money to three different people.”
Njoku said she went to the bank on March 22 to complain about what happened over the weekend, but the bank shielded the staff member from her and gave poor reasons she would not be allowed to see him.
“From all indications, they are trying to shield the staff who downloaded the app for me. He downloaded the application on my phone himself. When they sent the one-time password to my phone, he input it. He did every other security-related thing as I did not know how to operate the app,” said Njoku.
She said some police officers requested that the bank bring the staffer for questioning, but they refused. Rather, she said, GT Bank protected him with a weak excuse that the order came from their head office.
“Now, the branch has completely washed its hands off the matter. The bank turned down all my appeals to help me recover my money from the staffer. This money belongs to a group of women, and I cannot pay,” she said.
FIJ called the GT Bank customer care line, but it did not connect. An email sent to them had also not been responded to at press time.