By Tosin Olatokunbo
Stealing a whopping N20 billion from Nigeria’s oldest bank would have shaken the Kazeem Adeduntan-led commercial bank to its very foundation.
No doubt, many heads would have rolled from the top management level to the middle and lower cadres of Nigeria’s oldest commercial bank. But fate had a different plan for three employees of the bank who may have been dreaming of what to do with their share of such a humungous amount of money, if their conspiracy to steal, alongside a syndicate had materialised.
The story. Sometimes last year, three workers of the bank; Ozioma Ugorji, Ugwu Emeka, and Obike Chukwuka, conspired with a gang of internet robbers to steal the said amount from the bank using electronic means.
As part of the deal, the syndicate promised to provide a laptop to the employees which will then be connected to the bank’s server to enable the gang skim N20 billion from its account.
But luck ran out of the syndicate after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC got wind of their plot to connect the computer to tap into the bank’s main server.
The suspects have since been arrested, and are now being tried at a Lagos State Special Offences Court, Ikeja, Lagos.
Speaking to the magazine on condition of anonymity, a top staff of the bank said “the bank was lucky to have busted the syndicate before they perpetrated the fraud.
“The implications of such large amount being stolen from the bank would have been felt by all the stakeholders. The customers would have been apprehensive and the banking sector would have felt the impact of such theft, due to the position of First Bank in the country’s financial sector”.
While arraigning the three suspects on Wednesday, the EFCC said the fraud was stopped due to reliable intelligence by the anti-graft agency.
Explaining what happened at the tribunal on Wednesday, a prosecution witness, Adamu Dahiru, said the suspects were caught while trying to link the laptop they received from the syndicate to the bank’s main server. The laptop has now been confiscated, and currently in the custody of the commission, according to sources in EFCC, who also stated that the anti-graft agency “had gleaned useful information from the laptop that is now being used to prosecute the case”.
The prosecution witness, according to his statement made to the tribunal said the First Bank employees “conspired to give access to a fraudster to defraud the bank of over N20bn. The report we gathered was that the money was in the cloud and they needed to bring it out. The second defendant (Emeka) had a meeting with the syndicate at a hotel,” he said.
He added that, “When the first defendant (Ugorji) was arrested, he made a statement that he was introduced to the syndicate by the third defendant (Chukwuka) and that they had communicated with someone from the headquarters.
“The second defendant made a statement that a laptop was given after several promises that he should connect the laptop to the bank’s system.
“When he was on duty, he connected the laptop to the banking system, but during the connection, the I.P. of the laptop was picked up and the system was destroyed.”
Last August, one Salau Abdulmalik Femi was arrested by detectives from the Special Fraud Unit, SFU of the Nigeria Police Force, NPF for allegedly hacking into the server of a Nigerian bank to steal N1.87 billion.
The suspect, according to checks from the police, is believed to be the kingpin of a syndicate which specializes in hacking servers of commercial banks and other financial institutions. Had he succeeded, the suspect would have committed one of the biggest single electronic frauds in the country.
