EFCC witness: How bank staff hacked five accounts to steal N874m

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has presented its second witness in the ongoing trial of four members of staff of a bank accused of N874 million fraud.

The staff of the bank standing trial include Olusegun Babasola, Abisola Ahmed, Uchechukwu Uma and Jude Alphaeus.

According to the EFCC, the defendants, along with one Omidiji Joseph, face a two-count charge for their roles in the hacking of the bank’s database and the cloning of more than 22 ATM cards, which were used to steal and divert N874 million from five corporate customers.

The fraud was allegedly carried out within three days. Upon arraignment, the defendants pleaded not guilty.

At the proceedings on Thursday, the witness, Peter Ige, an information system auditor with the bank, told the court that his department was assigned to investigate the “massive fraud”.

Led in evidence by Nnaemeka Omewa, prosecution counsel, the witness identified the four staff of the bank in the dock.

“On 15 July, 2019, as a system auditor, my team was called upon to look at an instant of ATM fraud reported to the internal audit and to investigate same,” he said.

Ige told the court that the team reviewed the systems, the affected accounts as well as those suspected to have carried out the activities on the accounts.

“We observed that the accounts were linked to a set of ATM cards, with their daily withdrawal limits increased from N150,000 to about N150million,”he said.

He said the permitted frequency of withdrawal was also increased, adding that “this was very abnormal and so, it aided the commission of the fraud”.

He said the investigation focused on the members of staff who had authorised privilege and login details to view the accounts of customers and also increase such frequency and limits on withdrawals.

“Normally, there should be a request either from the customer or another department requesting the services,” he said.

“In this case, from our investigation conducted, there was no evidence provided by the defendants to go into these accounts.”

He told the court that after the investigation by his department, an activity log was compiled, which formed part of the internal investigation.