N250m fraud scandal rocks Fidelity Bank

A fraudulent storm has just been created by a personnel of Fidelity Bank PLC, who allegedly stole N250 million from a customer’s bank account.
The so-called money was allegedly stolen from the customer’s fixed deposit account.
The alleged fraud took place at the Allen Avenue Branch of the bank where the runaway banker was a senior staff member.
The personnel believed to be an account officer to the customer took advantage of his closeness to the customer to generate fake documents purportedly raised by the depositor to get the buy-in of the customer care department to approve of the withdrawal.
But there is a bigger twist to the alleged fraud – the banker, now at large, faked his own kidnap to distract attention from what he had wrought.
He used his leverage and inside information of the bank’s system to present fraudulent documents to the branch’s customer care unit which enabled him to steal the money without problem, leaving the branch and the bank’s head office in a confused state.
TheNiche gathered that an internal security mechanism of the bank was activated when the personnel’s claim of kidnap became an issue, and coinciding with the alarm raised by the depositor that his N250million had been fraudulently withdrawn.
One of the bank’s spokespersons demanded for more time to get across to the branch and explain to TheNiche how the alleged scandal was able to rock their system, but he did not get back at the time of going to press.
Fidelity Bank’s Head of Corporate Communications, Charles Aigbe neither returned calls by the TheNiche to his cell phone nor replied to a text message sent to his line by our correspondent.
On January 17, 2018, when our correspondent visited the Allen branch of the bank where the alleged fraud took place, the bank’s hall was filled with customers making various transactions.
The branch manager was said not be available when we demanded to see him.
Fidelity bank has been replete with different kinds of fraud cases targeted at the bank and its customers.
In 2017, a former female staff, Adenike Okuneye, was arraigned before a Lagos Magistrate Court for collecting money from customers of the bank with the pretext of saving it for them in the bank even when she had ceased to be in the bank’s employ.
In October 2017, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) charged two oil services companies and their directors for allegedly defrauding the bank of over N7billion.
The fraud was perfected by the companies – Danium Energy Services Limited and Petrosol Energy – by presenting fictitious oil contract and obtaining loans to execute the said contract.
Fidelity Bank leadership is still battling to extricate itself from alleged romance with former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke in the case instituted by the EFCC with regard to several millions of naira which the anti-graft Commission believes were funneled through the bank in the build up to the 2015 general election.