The odds of one’s debit card getting stuck in an ATM and N1.3 million vanishing without a trace minutes later may not be high but Regina Agbo, an Abuja resident, was not so lucky when the exact amount left her Zenith Bank account under the same circumstance in March 2023.

Agbo told EQ that although she did not expect her funds to disappear after her card got trapped in the machine, she did all she could to get it out, but her efforts did not matter in the end.

She said that she went to an Ecobank ATM gallery on March 9, 2023, to transfer some funds from her salary account. The ATM took her card without returning it after rejecting it the first time.

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To be sure nothing would go wrong, Agbo waited for a while because she was not sure if the machine had trapped her card or if it was a network issue. And while she did, a colleague passing by gave her their card to try the machine, but it rejected it.

The source’s statement of account

Agbo said that when she couldn’t wait any longer as it was getting late, she called a security official of the Ecobank branch to ask if her card had been retained by the ATM.

The security official inserted his card into the ATM, and it accepted it, she said. He then told her to leave, assuring her the card was safe. On her way back to the office, she attempted blocking her card with a Zenith Bank USSD code, but it failed.

“As soon as I entered the office, the next thing I received was debit alert messages in three tranches, the first being N500,000. I screamed. I had to run back to the bank that evening and ask what had happened,” Agbo told EQ.

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“A security official said there was nothing they could do and that I should come back the next day. The following day, I went there. The staffer in charge of the ATM said they learnt of what had happened but didn’t find a card when they checked the ATM.

“I asked for the CCTV footage, but the bank said I needed a police letter and a court document for that. The police collected money from me, but I didn’t see any results. They even said I should pay N150,000 for them to track the account that received the money. I told them I didn’t have, and they said there was nothing they could do.”

When EQ contacted Zenith Bank via email on Thursday, the Bank apologised for its delay in response and asked EQ to tell the source to directly contact them, which Agbo has done.

The bank has yet to say a word to Agbo at press time.
The post Customer Waits on Zenith Bank to Recover Her N1.3m Stolen From Ecobank ATM in 2023 appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.