87-year-old drags bank to court for suspicious withdrawal

An 87-year-old woman, Mrs. Sanusi Adebisi, has locked horns with the Union Bank Plc over the N253,000 withdrawn from her account in the bank via the Internet sometime in October 2013.

The claimant told the Magistrate’s Court sitting at the Ojokoro, Agbado area of Lagos that she just got N200,000 of the sum from her cooperatives to operate the tumour in her eye.

She told the court that the tumour had worsened since the scam took place because no longer had money to get rid of it.

Adebisi, who sells drinks in Orile-Agege, said she had been the sole signatory to her account since 1970s before her only daughter, Sanusi Ifedayo, was included as a joint signatory due to a health problem.

Ifedayo claimed she did not know anything about Internet transaction and told the court that she had rejected the use of an ATM card for the account, but an official of the bank insisted that she applied for it, saying some amount could not be cashed across the counter.

“I had withdrawn N40, 000 for Mama (mother) that day before the scam. It was my husband who went to greet her that very day that noticed the debit alerts on her phone.

I wrote a letter of complaint to the bank and its officials promised to investigate the matter. After a week, I was told that the money was withdrawn online by an unknown person. I don’t even know how to operate a Facebook account not to talk of using Internet for transaction. The bank is in best position to tell us what transpired,” she said.

She also claimed that she had never revealed the ATM pin to anyone.

The claimant’s counsel, Mr. Gbenga Julius, presented before the court, a signed and stamped printout of his client’s statement of account reportedly accessed from the Union Bank – an exhibit the defence counsel, Mr. Seyi Solaja, refuted.

Solaja maintained that the exhibit was not the same as the one the bank issues to its customers, adding that it was null and void under Section 84 of Evidence Act.

The magistrate, Mrs. T. Akani adjourned the case to July 27, 2014 for further hearing.