How Globus Bank Lost N1.7 Billion to Fraudsters in a System Glitch
Globus Bank Limited, a commercial bank licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has dragged eight other banks to court over a N1.7 billion electronic transfer fraud that occurred in June 2022.
The bank is seeking an order to recover N962 million that was illegally transferred from its vault to various accounts in the other banks.
According to a legal officer of Globus Bank, Kosisochukwu Ngene, who filed an affidavit before a Lagos high court, the fraud was perpetrated by 709 customers of the bank who exploited a system glitch in its Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) application.
The customers used the USSD platform to process several fraudulent and unauthorized transfers totalling N1.7 billion between June 6 and June 11, 2022.
The bank said it discovered the glitch and notified all the affected banks immediately, requesting them to restrict the beneficiary accounts and reverse the transfers in line with CBN regulations.
The bank also obtained an order from a magistrate court in Yaba to freeze and reverse the amount fraudulently transferred into various accounts.
However, the bank said that only some of the banks complied with the order and returned N818 million to Globus Bank, while N962 million remained outstanding. The bank said it needed a high court order to compel the other banks to reverse and remit the salvaged funds to it.
The eight banks involved are Access Bank Plc, Ecobank Nigeria Limited, Fidelity Bank Plc, First Bank of Nigeria Limited, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Polaris Bank Limited, Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc and United Bank for Africa Plc.
Globus Bank is asking the court to direct the eight banks to immediately reverse and remit N962 million to it, being the outstanding sum yet to be salvaged from the fraudulent transfers. The bank is also seeking an order for the banks to release all account information in respect of the destination accounts and the beneficiaries of the transferred funds.
The case has not been assigned to any judge yet.
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