BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
A customer with Access Bank in Osun State, Ajiboye Oladele, has narrated how the sum of N1, 261,000 was allegedly withdrawn from his account shortly after his Automated Teller Machine Card got stuck inside the machine at a branch of another commercial bank at Aregbe area, Gbongan Road, Osogbo recently.
Oladele said that he had visited the bank’s ATM point to withdraw some money but his card was trapped by the machine. He disclosed that his phone’s battery got drained at the time of the incident and that by the time he powered it, he had been debited to the tune of N1, 261,000 out of the total account balance of N1, 275,000.
However, he alleged that the commercial bank denied seeing his ATM card in the machine the moment he went to lodge a complaint. According to him, he almost passed out when he saw the debit alerts on his phone.
Narrating his experience, Oladele said, “It happened on the faithful Wednesday morning of May 18, 2022, I went to First Bank at Aregbe area in Osogbo, Osun State to use their ATM machine around 8am to withdraw money. Unfortunately, the ATM machine seized my card (Access Bank). After that, another person used the machine and the machine returned his own card but it did not dispense cash.
“Then, I went into the banking hall to complain in order for me to retrieve my ATM card from their machine vault, but to my surprise, I was told that they could not find my ATM card. Later, I went to one of the bank officials at the Customer Service Unit who later asked for my BVN number, unfortunately my phone battery was dead. So, I was unable to give him. He later asked for my Access Bank account number and he used it to generate my BVN number. He printed the BVN out and gave the BVN print out with my account details to the person in charge of retrieving ATM cards.
“The person insisted that he could not find my ATM card. Later, they told me that I should go to my bank (Access Bank) in order for my bank to block the card since he insisted that they cannot find it. Getting to my bank (Access Bank) at Ogooluwa, Osogbo around 8:30am, I told the customer service unit lady what happened and I told her to block my ATM card, she did so and I proceeded to the teller unit to withdraw the sum of N20, 000 using the withdrawal slip. The teller told me that I didn’t have up to that in my account.
“I was so shocked, I almost fainted, because I had about N1, 275,000 in my account that morning before my phone went off. Immediately I was told, I quickly brought out my phone and plugged it into a power socket within the bank (Access Bank). By the time I powered my phone back, I started receiving alerts of transactions that I did not initiate, running to N1, 261,000.
“The Customer Service Unit lady at Access Bank told me that the transaction was done using a POS machine and she told me to report to the police. The case is still with the police without any way forward.”
