First Bank, a Nigerian bank with a ₦829 billion market valuation, has filed a lawsuit to reclaim “huge sums of money” that it claims a worker at a head office team in Iganmu, Lagos, stole. The employee—who is currently at large—is accused of transferring those monies to 98 bank accounts—including his wife’s—that were identified as first beneficiaries.
The bank received three court orders between April 4–8, 2024, to block hundreds of bank accounts that were allegedly receiving the stolen funds after reporting the incident to the Nigerian Police Force on March 25, 2024.
While the initial amount found to be diverted was approximately ₦12 billion, three people with direct knowledge of the incident told TechCabal that it currently stands at approximately ₦40 billion ($29 million).
According to a First Bank employee with knowledge of the situation, the employee, named in court documents as Tijani Muiz Adeyinka, was authorized to handle customer reversals in her capacity as a manager on the electronic products team. It implied that he was in charge of an account from which he could credit merchant accounts and process those reversals.
Instead, Muiz allegedly used that power to credit customer requests for reversals to a merchant under his control. He purportedly did not require any additional authorizations because he was the team’s final line of authorization, which allowed him to continue misappropriating client funds for nearly two years without being discovered.
His plot was eventually uncovered when a client filed a complaint, which was then forwarded to the internal control department of the bank. After identifying multiple questionable transactions, the control unit informed the authorities.
“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 apprehending to face the wrath of the law,” read a letter dated May 10, 2024, from First bank to the Lagos State Commissioner of Police.
First Bank ignored TechCabal’s repeated calls and emails asking for comments.
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An inquiry for comments was not immediately answered by a Nigerian Police Force spokesperson. An inquiry for comments was not answered by the Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) spokesperson.
“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 did not disclose the amount of money that was stolen in any of the numerous court filings or complaints. Along with requesting that the Police “unravel the circumstances surrounding the fraud,” it remained silent on how the money was acquired.
Fraud is still a major problem in Nigeria’s financial services sector, even though there was a decrease in cases reported in Q1 2024. The largest banks in the nation are frequently the target of fraud attacks, despite fintech startups receiving disproportionate attention. According to a BusinessDay report, in 2023, Fidelity Bank lost ₦2.5 billion in three incidents, and Access Bank lost ₦6.15 billion due to fraud.
On April 8, a Federal High Court in Lagos issued an order to First Bank, blocking the bank accounts of the first and second beneficiaries of the funds obtained illegally. The bank also received further orders to block more accounts thought to be connected to the incident, dated April 8 and May 5, from high courts in Jalingo and Lagos.
An anonymous email detailing the bank accounts of several cryptocurrency traders claimed that one of the first beneficiary accounts used some of the stolen money to purchase the stablecoin USDT from others. TechCabal received the email.
These traders denied knowing the money they received was fraud proceeds and insisted that their only role was selling USDT. As of the time of this report, they were embroiled in a legal dispute with the bank over account restrictions.
