An investigator with Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) told a Lagos court on Thursday how four bank officials cloned ATM cards and linked some accounts to steal N874 million belonging to fidelity bank and its customers in 2019.
Chimdinma Peter appeared as the third prosecution witness in the trial of the four bank officials and an alleged outside conspirator at the Ikeja Special Crimes Court, Lagos.
Peter’s testimony focused on the findings of the EFCC’s investigations into the alleged fraud, anti-corruption agency spokesman Wilson Uwujaren said in a statement.
The four bank officials facing the fraud charges are Olusegun Babasola, Abisola Ahmed, Uchechukwu Uma, Jude Aphaeus.
The one who is not a staff member and is on trial along with them is Omidiji Joseph.
EFCC had said that the money stolen through the hacked ATM cards belonged to five corporate clients: American International Insurance Company Limited (AIICO); Exchange; OVH Energy Marketing Ltd.; Sinking Fund Account of Fidelity Bank and FSL Securities Ltd.
‘How the alleged fraud was perpetrated’
Testifying about the alleged fraud on Thursday, the third witness for the prosecution, Mr. Peter, told the court that EFCC received a petition from Fidelity Bank about the alleged fraud and immediately took action.
Led by the prosecutor, Nnaemeka Omewa, the witness said his team of investigators discovered that the alleged fraud was perpetrated using the Postillion app.
He said: “We accessed the banking application domiciled on the server to determine the IP address used.
“It pointed to a System domiciled in the Virtual Unit of the bank domiciled in Lagos.
“The system was identified and we discovered that it was being used to unlink existing ATM cards and link them to other accounts.”
fidelity bank
The witness said investigations revealed that the ATM cards were linked to the five “victim accounts” from which N874 million were withdrawn at different times.
“The system used was identified and we observed that to access it, the login data must be used.
“We discovered that the profile used belonged to the third and fourth accused.
“We reviewed the activities of the Virtual Unit and found that three members of the Unit staff also viewed the affected accounts prior to the withdrawals when they had no reason to do so,” the witness said.
He added: “In order for the Virtual Bank Unit to see an account, there must be a request from the Qserve, but a review for the period July 9-15, 2019 revealed no requests to the Virtual Bank Unit. ”
Peter said that the third and fourth defendants claimed to be unaware of using their profile login details to access the Postillion app during the period the alleged fraud was perpetrated.
“The app was used to increase the daily withdrawal limit from N150,000 to N100 million,” the witness added.
A Fidelity Bank information systems auditor, Peter Ige, testified in the case as the second prosecution witness on Wednesday.
Ige had testified about the findings of the bank’s internal investigation into the alleged fraud in 2019.
The witness, who claimed to be part of the internal investigation team, told magistrate judge Oluwatoyin Taiwo how the four officials allegedly hacked into the bank’s database and cloned more than 22 ATM cards to steal N874 million in three days.
‘How the profits were distributed’
Petet said that when the accounts were linked to the ATM cards, the money was withdrawn in cash and also transferred to other bank accounts, including King Dommy Enterprise’s.
“King Dommy Enterprise received various tranche inflows of N908,000 totaling N136 million debited from FSL.
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“Of this, N50 million was transferred to the account of the fifth defendant, Omidiji Joseph Olanrewaju, on July 15, which was then disbursed to different accounts, including Findrex Aviation business school and Waltham BDC.”
The third prosecution witness also presented further evidence against the defendants, including a DVD of CCTV footage from the bank on Thursday.