Thursday, August 4,2022

Samson Oyinlade, a skilled worker in Oyo State, has detailed how N50,000 was transferred from his First Bank account to SportyBet without his authorisation.

Oyinlade told FIJ that after the N50,000 got to his SportyBet account, a scammer used it to bet on some games and then transferred the proceeds to a Polaris Bank account.

He said that after receiving his N50,000 salary on June 29, he received an additional N1 credit alert four times but could not access his account.

Oyinlade said he tried to find out how much he had later in the night, only to find an empty account, despite having received his salary hours earlier.

“I could no longer sleep. At the break of dawn, I went to the bank to complain. They asked me to block my card, which I did. Then they asked me where I normally used my card. I told them I used it online to bet,” Oyinlade told FIJ.

He said that the bank representative who attended to him made a check on his account and found out that the money was in his SportyBet account.

“They said it was hanging due to several transactions and could be reversed later,” he said.

Oyinlade said the bank told him to send an email to Paystack on the issue, but the payment platform said the money was with First Bank.

He said Paystack told him to call the bank to complain, which he did immediately.

When I got to the bank, they mailed Mastercard because the ATM card was a Mastercard card. But Mastercard replied that the money had been transferred to a SportyBet account,” he said.

“Later, I found that the N50,000 was transferred from my First Bank account into my SportyBet account and the person used it to place a bet, won it, and transferred the money to Polaris Bank.

“The bank printed all the mails sent to them from Mastercard. They withdrew N20,000, N20,000, N9,000, N500 and N500.”

FIJ sent a message to First Bank, but they had not responded at press time. SportyBet has also not responded to an email sent to them