UBA Ignores Defrauded Victims’ Cries After Staff Evades Justice On 15M Fraud

Mberede Lovelyn Chiamaka has been reportedly disregarded by the United Bank for Africa (UBA) for the past three months after she and four others were duped by the bank former staff, Monday Sule Ilemona.

Brandnewsday gathers that while awaiting UBA to serve justice since the past three months after the five victims were defrauded of N15 million inside the bank’s branch at Oshodi, Lagos.

Recall that Sule Ilemona had approached and presented himself as a staff of the bank and marketed the UBA Target Account to Chiamaka, her husband and neighbours. As a then staff member of UBA, he carried out transactions on behalf of UBA inside the bank’s premises.

On April 8, FIJ had reported on the fraud Monday had committed. Ramon Nasir, UBA’s Group Head of Media and External Relations told FIJ that immediately after seeing the story, the Head of Internal Control had written to the bank’s Head of Customer Service and an Executive Director to investigate the issue and find an immediate resolution to the matter.

READ: How UBA ‘Ended’ Man’s Promising Future By ‘Eating’ His Huge Money

As a matter of urgency, Nasir had promised the bank would “resolve it as quickly as we can and to the benefit of the complainant”.

“I can assure you that from the responses I have had this morning, the investigation is ongoing,” he said.

“This issue will be resolved and an amicable resolution will be met”.

UBA Ignores Defrauded Victims’ Cries After Staff Evades Justice On 15m Fraud

Nasir had also explained that even though Monday was most probably acting on his own personal volition, it didn’t excuse the responsibility of the bank to the customer.

“The customer is not responsible to start identifying whether the staff of any institution is real or not real,” he said.

“The guy holds an ID Card so he is an agent of the bank. We will find a resolution to this. We will resolve it as quickly as we can and to the benefit of the complainant.”

However, three months later, Chiamaka has not been contacted by UBA. Not a phone call was made, or a text message sent to invite her to settle the issue she had. She told FIJ that UBA’s failure to reach out to her means they don’t care and are heartless.

“They have rendered me useless simply because I trusted their bank,” she said.

However, Chiamaka felt cheated and assumed that UBA would have invited them to hear their own side of the story. Unfortunately, her assumption never happened.

As a corollary, the victim’s husband has been dealing with depression and her baby has taken ill. “Right now I can’t afford hospital bills, I can’t even buy drugs. We are planning on relocating to the village but our landlord gave us more months because he knew what happened.”

The landlord gave them a grace of six months when their rent expired in January. However, with no source of income, raising their rent poses to be a challenge and relocating to the village might be the last option they are left with.

READ: SAD: How Senior UBA Staff Defrauded Five Customers Of N15 Million

“We are begging some of our family and friends if I can start any roadside business with at least N100,000, anything to start life with,” she says in between sighs.

Back in January, the legal service division of UBA had responded to a letter by Chiamaka’s lawyer, saying: “The bank did not defraud your clients as alleged. Your client and Monday Sule were involved in a private investment scheme.”

Chiamaka who had just given birth when the fraud took place told FIJ the business she and her husband ran had to be shut down as they were left with nothing. In between suffering financial loss, her brother was involved in an accident, and she has been unable to help out with footing the medical bills.

“The little money we have in our hands is what we used in fighting this case from Area F to Zone 2 from Zone 2 to court,” Chiamaka said.

Getting justice has been hard. Her husband has now been forced to look for menial jobs with lowly wages just to keep a glimmer of hope burning.

Source: Foundation for Investigative Journalism

The question begging for answers are: why is the bank not making any moves to invite the defrauded customers?

Is the bank backing its former staff?

Why hasn’t the bank gives any update three months after?