FIJ
Zenith Bank and First Bank have left Fatai Ademola Hamzat, a Lagos-based resident, ruing his fate and have offered him no help following an unauthorised transfer of N1.2 million from his account after an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) at a First Bank branch in Mowe seized his ATM card in June.
A few minutes after inserting his ATM card into an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) of a First Bank branch in Mowe on June 11, Hamzat’s ATM card got stuck.
He had walked into the ATM gallery around 5 pm that day to withdraw N10,000, but he left the bank without neither the money he intended to withdraw nor his card.
That was not all he lost.
The Zenith Bank customer told FIJ on Tuesday that he lost N1,250,000 to multiple unauthorised transactions.
“Between 5 and 5:30 pm on June 11, I made an attempt to withdraw N10,000 from a First Bank branch in Mowe. The ATM withheld my card and I reported it to the security guard. He told me they had closed and he couldn’t retrieve the card for me,” Hamzat narrated his experience.
“All of a sudden, I received a debit alert of N500,000. A few minutes later, I saw multiple alerts of N500,000, N250,000 and the last one was N6,500. This happened while my ATM card was still in the machine.”
Hamzat added that he could not lodge complaints at the bank until June 15. He wrote a letter to First Bank and Zenith Bank to aid in the recovery of his missing funds. On June 26, the bank acknowledged his letter and wrote him a letter detailing the results of their investigations.
In the letter, Zenith Bank stated that the unauthorised transactions were card-present PoS withdrawals and transfers. It added that the funds from Hamzat’s accounts were transferred into two bank accounts belonging to Abuchi Austin Okeke, a PMFB customer, and Abuchi Okeke, a Palmpay customer, between 6:0 pm and 6:02 pm on June 11.
That was the last time he heard from his bank. He employed the services of a lawyer to address it as a legal case, but the bank has yet to respond to Hamzat’s legal representative.
“We have been on the issue since then but it has not been resolved. My lawyer told me on Monday that he sent them a reminder, but they did not respond,” he lamented.
FIJ emailed First Bank and Zenith Bank on Wednesday, but neither has responded at press time.
Hamzat’s experience illustrates how bank users are sometimes left to their fate when money disappears from their accounts minutes after their ATM card gets stuck in a machine.
On Wednesday, FIJ reported how Atanda Samson, a Union Bank customer, lost N182,500 to an unauthorised transaction after his ATM card got stuck in a Union Bank ATM in Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, in October.
THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN FIJ
