FHC Official Battles Zenith Bank Over Stolen Money

FHC Official Battles Zenith Bank Over Stolen Money

An official of the  Lagos division of the Federal High Court, Tunde Fagbuyiro, has petitioned the Managing Director of Zenith Bank, Peter Amangbo over alleged theft of money from his account through his trapped Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card.

Fagbuyiro, who maintains a current account with Access Bank, had attempted to withdraw funds from his account using the ATM machine of the Bourdillion branch of Zenith Bank in Ikoy, Lagos.

However, the ATM card got trapped in the machine, while in the process, money got stolen from his account.

Fagbuyiro, in a petition signed by his lawyer, Romanus Eze, recalled that the card got trapped at about 4:14pm on September 11, 2014, while all efforts to retrieved it were unsuccessful.

Eze added: "Consequent upon the above fact, our client reported to the security officers who in turn called one Mr Samuel, a staff member of your bank who was inside the banking hall at the material time being that banking activities for that day had ended and customers were not allowed inside.

"However, Mr Samuel did not respond either by asking our client to wait behind to get his ATM card or to come inside the banking hall to have the complaint sorted out. Thus our client left the bank premises hoping to come back the next day and get his ATM card back. 

"But to our client's greatest shock and consternation, he started receiving withdrawal alerts on the same account on his mobile phone at 11.38pm of 11th September and 12.05am of 12th September, 2014. Our client's account that held N193, 890.00 had been  depleted to N948.98k," Eze narrated.

He added that when Fagbuyiro rushed to the branch of Zenith Bank on September 12 to lay complaint about what had happened, he was told that the bank would not do anything on it because he does not maintain an account with them.

The lawyer, who was outraged by that response, said it was obvious that Zenith Bank and its officers acted in breach of their duty of care to his client who though does not maintain an account with the bank, but is protected by law from being negligently exposed to circumstance that would cause him injury.

"The pertinent questions that need to be asked are: How come our client's ATM card that was trapped in your bank's ATM machine was used to make the fraudulent withdrawals?

"How did the fraudster gain access to our client's ATM card that was trapped in your bank's ATM machine?

"All these questions strongly connect Zenith Bank and its officers to the incident and none else can explain it all," the lawyer stressed.

The bank is therefore urged to refund the stolen funds and pay reasonable compensation, failure of which further necessary actions would be taken against the bank.

When contacted, the media department of Zenith Bank, after investigation, repeated that there was nothing the bank could do on the issue owing to the fact that the affected account belonged to another bank.