A High Court sitting in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State has sanctioned one new generation bank located at Ogoja road in the capital city over fraudulent deduction of the sum of N500, 000 from its customer’s account.
The court ordered the bank to refund the deducted sum to the customer and also pay him N200, 000 as damages for the unauthorized deduction.
The plaintiff, Emmanuel Eyarekpe accused the bank of permitting illegal withdrawal of N500, 000 from his account on July 10, 2023 without seeking his consent via OTP or email message as it is required for every transaction.
Delivering judgement on the matter, Justice Frank Edem ordered the bank to refund the customer the complete half a million naira withdrawn from his account without his consent, pay him 10 per cent of the said sum from the day of the judgement to the day of refund as well as N200,000 as damages.
Reacting after the judgement, Eyarekpe said, “It is a matter of mismanagement of my fund by my bank. On the 10th day of July 2023, the bank paid out my N500, 000.00 to somebody else I don’t know without my consent. The same day when I noticed what happened, I removed the balance of N200, 000 because I used to have a total of N700, 000 in that very account. I used the same pin number and withdrew the balance into my other account for safety.
“The bank is saying that the pin was reset. But, the problem was that if the pin was reset by an internet fraudster, how then was I able to still use the same pin to perform a transaction on the account the same day? I have never used a bank app; rather, I do internet banking which requires OTP. For the transfer of the missing N500, 000 from my account, the bank did not send any OTP to me to approve the transaction and no letter to my email for my authorization, but in other transactions, they normally send.
“So, the court told the bank to refund me the total sum deducted without my consent from my account which is N500, 000. In the course of my complaint, the bank decided to refund in bits by paying N5, 000 and N800.00 into my account. Now, the bank has been ordered to pay N494, 200.00, N200, 000.00 as damages and ten per cent of the sum from the day of the judgement to the day of the refund. I thank the court for insisting on maintaining sanity in the society.”
