N600 Million Fraud Rocks FinBank *** Staffers Arrested

FinBank MD, Suzanne Iroche

Flaming quest for fast money has nearly crippled one of nation’s financial institutions, FinBank Plc as some of the staffers of the organization, decided to play a fast one on the bank by defrauding it to the tune of N600 million. FinBank, one of the bank rescued by another bank and about to be rebranded to a more professional bank has set itself backwards with the fraud as banking activities almost grinded to a halt about two weeks ago when the fraud was discovered.
According to sources, the fraud was said to have been committed at the Randle Branch of the bank in Apapa. A female staff of the bank, had her password tampered with while those in the game decided to use the ladies computer, having hacked her user identification to transfer the bank’s money to various customers’ accounts with the hope of withdrawing through numerous ways, making it cumbersome for it to be traced easily, while also using such customers as conduit pipes.
It was said that, the nefarious move had started on a Sunday and as at Monday, June 4, 2012 over N200 million had been withdrawn in less than 24 hours.
Also, we gathered that, while some withdrawals were done over the counter in different branches by different people with different FinBank accounts, others also used the ATM machines to withdraw to its limits instantly.
Those in the know, hinted that, the account tampered with is the bank’s Upfront Account where all salaries were drawn from.
This, sources say, led to the text messages sent penultimate week to all customers of the bank that, they are experiencing some challenges due to system upgrade and customers should bear with the bank.
The single fraud was also the reason why Finnacle, a software package used by the bank, was shut down temporarily on Tuesday, the day after the fraud was detected; thereby giving customers hell to access their transferred funds.
At present, we gathered that the staffer, whose password was compromised, had been arrested along with the Head of Operations of the Randle, Apapa branch of the bank since he is the one to approve User’s identity in the branch.
Though, the Special Fraud section of the Nigerian Police Force, we gathered have also made some arrests, but the singular fraud has hit at the bank negatively.

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