Hope Payment Service Bank Loses N6.5Billion To Fraudsters

OpenLife Nigeria reports that as gale of fraud ravaging financial institutions in Nigeria continues unabated, the latest victim of N6,563,910,853.00 Billion fraud, Hope Payment Service Bank Limited, has filed an application before a Federal High Court in Lagos to salvage the defrauded funds before they are dissipated.

In an application filed before the court, accompanied by 17 paragraphs affidavit deposed to by Chief finance Officer of Hope Payment services Bank, Mr.Abiodun Fade, and argued before the court by a Lagos lawyer Barrister, Ukon Uye with I.E. Awolola, the bank said that on Sunday 15th of July,2024,there was unauthorized access to Hope Payment Service Bank Limited Banking Platform following which huge sums of money were transferred fraudulently from the bank’s banking platform to certain beneficiaries accounts domiciled in other banks.
According to the bank, the total sum of N6,563,910,853.00 Billion was involved.

The bank stated that immediately it discovered the fraud committed on its mobile banking platform, it made demands to banks to claw back and save the funds.
Mr Fade averred further that if the accounts of the illegal beneficiaries and recipients of these illicit transactions domiciled with other banks are not urgently blocked and clawed back to the bank’s customers’ account, the bank stands at a risk of losing millions of naira belonging to its depositors, investors and shareholders.
However, the perpetrators of the fraud having gotten wind of the bank’s efforts to recover the money have begun dissipating the money transferred into these various accounts.
“These perpetrators have devised various artifices to dissipate the funds and there is a very high-risk having regard to the facts deposed to herein that unless this application is heard expeditiously,” the bank said.

“If this application is not granted, the funds illegally and illicitly transferred will be dissipated by illegal beneficiaries and recipient of these funds.
“The financial risk and exposure of the bank is humongous and far reaching that it will take only immediate intervention of the court to forestall same,” the bank said.

Meantime, after hearing the submission of the counsel to Hope Payment Services Limited, the court ordered an interim injunction directing the banks whether by themselves, their servants, agents, privies, officers or any representatives to place a restriction on the money standing to the credit of the banks listed before the court to the extent of the sum applicable to each beneficiary which was illegally transferred from the Plaintiff’s Banking Platform to the accounts of the respective beneficiaries domiciled with the Defendants pending the hearing and determination of the Motion on Notice for interlocutory injunction filed in this suit is hereby granted.