By Amaka Ifeakandu
Lagos
The nation’s financial system has continued to record higher increase in fraudulent activities following the usage of Mobil banking, ATMs, e-Commerce for business transactions in the country.
The current data from Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) showed that in 2014 a total of N6.215 billion was the actual amount loss to fraud against N485.194 million reported in 2013.
Presenting paper at the Nigeria Electronic Fraud, Forum (NEFF) in Lagos, Head Information System Security, NIBSS, Olufemi Fadamo,said that the number of attempts at fraud within the year under review declined to N7.750 billion from N19.148 billion recorded in the previous year. He said that the number of cases of fraud reported increased from 822 in 2013 to 1461 in 2014.
He, however said that ATM machines were the major victims of fraudulent activities in terms of volume as it experienced the highest number of fraudulent transactions.
It was followed by Internet Banking, Web and across the counter transactions with a volume of 287, 218 and 153 respectively. He futher said that in value terms, Internet Banking alone accounted for a loss of N3.2 billion to fraudulent activities.
He said that as part of investigation process and the number of suspects criminals apprehended after fraud had been reported was low. He said that out of 1461 cases reported only 41 were apprehended. Expressing the need to improve apprehension rate he said people were not apprehended due to some constraints like law/legal contest that is not clearly define when it comes to fraudulent and cyber crimes carried out using electronic platforms. Another issue according to him is the collaboration of the low enforcement agents and the financial industry.