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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has told a Lagos State court how Staff members of Fidelity Bank allegedly stole N874Million Naira from the bank and its customers.
In a statement EFCC, the accused Bank staff, Olusegun Babasola, Abisola Ahmed, Uchechukwu Uma, Jude Aphaeus, allegedly cloned more than 22 Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards and stole N874million.
The N874Million is said to belong to five of the bank’s corporate customers – American International Insurance Company Limited (AIICO), Interswitch, OVH Energy Marketing Ltd, Fidelity Bank sinking fund account and FSL Securities Ltd.
The EFCC presented Chidimma Peter, an investigator with the commission as one of its prosecuting Witness in trial.
“Upon receipt, we commenced investigation into the alleged fraud, which we found out was perpetrated using the Postillion App.
“The application was used to increase the daily withdrawal limit from N150,000 to N100 million,” the witness added.
“We accessed the banking app domiciled in the server to ascertain the IP address used.
“It pointed to a system domiciled at the Virtual Unit of the bank domiciled in Lagos.
“The system was identified and we found out it was used to de-link already existing ATM cards, and link them to some other accounts.”
“Investigation revealed that the ATM cards were linked to the five victims ‘accounts from which N874 million was withdrawn at different times.
“The system used was identified and we observed that for it to be accessed, login details must be used.
“We found out that the profile used belonged to the third and fourth defendants.
“We reviewed the activities of the Virtual Unit and found out that three members of staff of the Unit also viewed the affected accounts prior to the withdrawals when they had no reason to do so.
“For the Virtual Unit of the bank to view an account, there must be a request from the Qserve, but a review for the period from 9th to 15th July 2019 did not reveal any request to the Virtual Unit of the bank.”
On how the funds were distributed, Peter Ige, an Information System Auditor with Fidelity Bank told the court how the funds were siphoned.
He said; “King Dommy Enterprise received several inflows of tranches of N908,000 totalling N136 million debited from FSL.
“From this, N50 million was transferred to the account of the fifth defendant, Omidiji Joseph Olanrewaju on 15th July, which was thereafter disbursed to different accounts including Findrex Aviation business school and Waltham BDC.”
The accused persons pleaded not guilty to the charges.
