Sulaiman Adebola, a Lagos State-based civil servant, has narrated how N250,000 mysteriously left his GTBank account without his authorisation.

Adebola told FIJ that the incident happened between May 2 and 3, and that he could not immediately report the incident at the bank’s branch closest to him because the government had declared holidays on those days.

“On April 27, I discovered that N1,000 had been stolen from my account by unknown persons. In the narration, I saw that the money had left my account through Paystack,” Adebola said.

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“I was confused because I was sure I had never carried out any Paystack transaction before. This prompted me to immediately lodge a complaint on the bank’s official Twitter handle.

“I did not immediately get any response from GTBank.”

The civil servant said someone who claimed to be one of the bank’s officials later responded to his chat.

“The person described himself as one of the bank’s officials and sent me a ‘Customer Care WhatsApp line’. He advised me to re-route my complaint through the WhatsApp channel and assured me of a quick resolution,” Sulaiman said.

“After my chat with the supposed GTBank staff member on the WhatsApp line, N106,000 suddenly disappeared from my account on May 2, a public holiday.

“Before I could recover from the first debit, another 100,000 left my account on May 3, which was yet another public holiday. The fraudsters continued to carry out the transactions on my account until a total of N250,000 was stolen from it.

“Since the incident happened on two successive public holidays, I could not make a formal complaint until May 4 when when banks reopened. It was then that my account was placed on restriction and I was also told to write a formal complaint.

“The shocking part is that the ‘bank official’ never requested for my card details during my interaction with him. He only made promises to me that the issue would be resolved. But after our chat, my N250,000 disappeared.”

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Sulaiman told FIJ that he was later sent a response by GTBank’s Fraud Monitoring Team that the fraud on his account was not the bank’s fault.

“They also said they suspected that I had compromised my bank account details. I find the response ridiculous because I have never at any time exposed my bank details before. I want my money back. It is the bank’s fault, not my fault.”

FIJ sent an email to GTBank’s Fraud Desk on December 29, 2022, for comments on the matter, but it had not been responded to at press time.