An alleged victim of business email fraud has described how scammers allegedly stole a whopping ₦548,900 from his bank accoount.
The victim, who did not disclose his name, said he had received a supposed invite from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), with an added advice for him to follow a link to download what he had expected to be the complete letter of invitation.
He said that when he clicked the link, it led to his email user page where he had to input his username and password.
He entred all the details, and when he didn’t see anything like an EFCC invite in his inbox, he simply logged. Unbeknown to him, his actions had opened him up to the fraudsters who reportedly harvested the information to raid his bank account.
The alleged notification reportedly reads as follows:
SCAM ALERT
I received a mail from “EFCC” with the details below:
Good day,
Please kindly find
attached your invitation letter to our office on the 15Th of December 2023. All necessary details are in the attached document.
Note: Treat as urgent
Thanks
DSP Samuel Ajiboye
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
Address: 15A Awolowo Rd, Ikoyi, Lagos
I was eager to know what EFCC and I have in common that warranted such invitation to their office. So, I opened the attachment and it didn’t open; instead, it took me to my Yahoo login details.
Unfortunately, I logged in with my email and password and the attachment still didn’t open. So, I left it and went to bed. This morning 14th December, a total of ₦548,900 was illegally transferred from my account.
The hackers changed my bank login details. They requested OTP for forgot password. They requested for OTP to create token seed and the bank granted them. All these transactions started from 1am today. They transferred my hard earned money to various account.
When I called customer care I was asked if I have my debit card with me and the answer was yes. The bank told me that they open a mobile app with my card on another phone to make all the transfers
The victim goes on to counsel others, “Although I’m hoping that the bank will do the needful but please be alerted that scammers are daily upgrading their tactics to defraud people. BEWARE OF SCAMMERS
“Lesson learnt. Do not open mail without checking the address very well.”
