First Bsnk logo, Acting MD/ CEO, First Bank, Olusegun Alebiosu
By Our Reporter
The Olusegun Alebiosu led First Bank of Nigeria Limited has witnessed yet another fraud scandal as a staff of the old generation bank, Tijani Muiz Adeyinka, is currently on the run after he was discovered to be enmeshed in a N40 billion fraud.
First Bank, which has a market capitalisation of ₦829 billion has begun legal action to recover “huge sums of money” allegedly diverted by Adeyinka, an employee at a head office team in Iganmu, Lagos.
Adeyinka allegedly diverted those funds to 98 bank accounts classified as first beneficiaries, including his wife’s account.
The bank reported the incident to the Nigerian Police Force on March 25, 2024, and obtained three court orders between April 4–8, 2024 to block hundreds of bank accounts believed to have received the stolen funds.
Gathered that while the initial amount discovered to be diverted was around ₦12 billion, it now stands at around ₦40 billion ($29 million).
Adeyinka, a manager on the electronic products team at First Bank, allegedly authorised the process of reversals for customers.
Adeyinka controlled an account with which he processed those reversals and could credit merchant accounts.
The banker allegedly used that authority to instead credit customer reversal requests to a merchant he controlled. As the last line of authorisation on the team, he allegedly did not need any further approvals, it allowed him to carry on diverting customer funds for almost two years without detection.
His scheme was eventually discovered when a customer made a complaint that was eventually escalated to the bank’s internal control unit. The control unit discovered several suspicious transactions and reported to the police.
“We hereby bring to your notice the discovery of fraudulent transactions into various transactions within and outside the bank and request your good offices to set up the machinery of investigation in place with a view to unravel the circumstances surrounding the said fraud and get the culprits arrested to face the wrath of the law,” read a letter dated May 10, 2024, from First bank to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police.
“I discovered that one Muiz Tijani Adeyinka, a former staff of First Bank was involved in the nefarious posting of fraudulent transactions,” read a statement from the investigating Police officer in charge of the case signed March 26, 2024.
“It was discovered that he made some fraudulent transactions to his wife’s account number (name withheld) domiciled with Zenith Bank, which in turn transferred to other beneficiaries totaling thirty-four accounts which also gave birth to second beneficiaries domiciled with other banks totaling 1,190 accounts,” the statement added.
First Bank obtained an order on April 8 to block the bank accounts of the first and second beneficiaries of the illegally obtained funds from a Federal High Court in Lagos. The bank also obtained additional orders dated April 8 and May 5 from a Jalingo and a Lagos high court to block additional accounts believed to be involved in the incident.
One first beneficiary account reportedly used some of the stolen funds to buy the stablecoin USDT from several crypto traders detailing their bank accounts.
Those traders claimed their only involvement was selling USDT and denied knowing the funds they received were proceeds of fraud. They have now been drawn into a legal battle with the bank with restrictions on their accounts at the time of this report.
Efforts to make Chinwe Bode-Akinwade react to the development did not yield positive result, as she was yet to respond to our inquiry as at the time of filing this report
Credit: TechCabal
