By Raphael Ede
Enugu
Two staffers of a new generation bank have landed in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) custody for their alleged involvement in a N20 million fraud.
The two-man syndicate, Hammed Balogun and Olayiwola Akinsohun, according to the Commission, were arrested by their employers and handed over to the agency for investigation and prosecution.
EFCC’s Head of Media, South-east zone, Nwanyinma Okeanu, in statement yesterday said Hammed Balogun, 31, a graduate of History and International Relations from Ekiti State University, who worked as a bank teller, was lured into the act by a man he simply referred to as Alhaji (full names yet to be identified.)
According to the statement, Balogun had alleged that the said Alhaji had come into the bank to make enquiry from him on how to open a savings account, and thereafter they started relating. About two weeks later Alhaji called him asking that he should meet him in a hotel at Ibadan where he requested him to change somebody’s account mandate for him.
Not convinced, Balogun said he called his friend Olayiwola Akinsohun, whom he said helped him to get the bank job, but worked in another branch of the bank at Otta.
The 29-year-old Akinsohun, a part-time student of Crown Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, who works as a customer contact officer of the bank had meeting with the said Alhaji, who presented the “deal” which according to Balogun ‘after weighing the pros and cons of it’, felt it was not going to work and backed out.
Akinsohun accepted the offer from the Alhaji to change a customer’s account mandate. Eventually he effected the change by changing the names and signatures of a state government’s account and five days later over N20 million was withdrawn from the account.
EFCC said when the bank head office noticed it, it invited Akinsohun, queried him and handed him over to the agency for investigation and prosecution.
