By Babajide Komolafe

All customers’ money in a bank is called a deposit. The money may be in current or savings account, it is still called deposit.
Many people have lost their bank deposits to fraudsters. It is a painful experience that appears to increase in defiance of the various anti-fraud measures and campaigns of the banks. The following series will discuss steps you can take to protect your money from these fraudsters.

There are two categories of fraudsters that target bank deposits. I refer to them as bank and non-bank fraudsters. The bank fraudsters are current staff and officials of the bank. They explore their positions or weaknesses in the banks to illegally access customers’ accounts and deposits.

The non-bank fraudsters are not employees or officials of the bank. They are everyday people. Some of them may be former staff/officials of banks and hence have a good idea of the system. Some of them are relatives and friends who leverage on the carelessness of the bank customer to access their account login details including passwords to access his/her account and illegally withdraw the deposit.

And some of these non-bank fraudsters are pure criminals. Some of them are armed robbers, kidnappers who use violence to either dispossess bank customers of their ATM cards or to compel people to divulge their login details or even force the bank customer to use their card on fraudulently procured PoS terminal to make transfer to designated accounts of the fraudsters. An example is the ‘One-Chance’ phenomenon, which is the use of commercial buses in Lagos by criminals to lure unsuspecting people, who are then forced to transfer money from their account to another account belonging to a member of the gang.

What makes these fraud incidents so heart-wrenching is that the banking regulation is designed in a way that makes it difficult for victims to recover their money. The regulation requires that the victim must provide a court order before the bank can even take concrete action that will lead to the recovery of the money from the account used for the fraudulent transaction. Without a court order, the best the bank can do is to impose a lien on the account, or a post-no-debit on the account. However, this does not provide the relief required for the victim.

Given the above, you must take steps that can reduce the risk of losing your money to these fraudsters.

While there is little you can do to protect your money from bank staff and officials (bank fraudsters), you can do so much to hinder non-bank fraudsters from accessing your money.