Mary Agidi

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In June 2024, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested two former employees of Union Bank for allegedly stealing N4.2 million from a deceased customer’s account in Makurdi, Benue  state.

The suspects – Idah Ogoh and Agbo Okwute – allegedly perpetrated the fraud using debit cards procured on the account without the consent of the account owner or family.

Two bankers, Titus Chima Nwankwo and George Ifiok Utibe-Abasi, were also convicted for stealing N2.9 million from the account of a deceased customer, Godfried Francis Osso, in August 2022 at Calabar, Cross River state. They were convicted for forging the signature of the late Osso and withdrawing the said amount from his account.

Also, sometime in March 2020, the EFCC arraigned five workers of Fidelity Bank Plc before a High Court sitting in Uyo over the diversion of deceased customers’ money to their accounts. The accused were identified as Mbong Essien, Akwa Akwa, Precious John, Kenneth Udoetuk, and Ubong Udom.

 According to the anti-graft agency, they were arrested after the Uyo Zonal Office uncovered the criminal syndicate of bankers who specialized in forging signatures of deceased bank customers to steal from their accounts.

Meanwhile, research by The Hope reveals that the crime is not limited to Nigerian bankers alone. There are recorded cases of such in developed countries like the United States of America. In December 2023, a 35-year-old employee of an Essex County, New Jersey bank, Jorge Nova, was reportedly charged with fraudulently withdrawing federal retirement benefits from the account of a deceased customer. He was charged by indictment with one count of wire fraud before the U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer and was on a $100,000 unsecured bond.

According to documents filed by the Office of the Inspector General, Social Security Administration of the U.S Attorney’s office, Nova was an employee at a commercial bank in Nutley, New Jersey as of 2014, where a customer received Social Security Administration (SSA) retirement benefits via direct deposit. The Social Security Administration was not notified of the beneficiary’s death and continued to deposit retirement benefits into the beneficiary’s bank account for more than four years, until October 2018. Nova fraudulently obtained funds from the beneficiary’s account by causing debit cards to be issued to himself in the beneficiary’s name, which he then used to drain the retirement benefits from the beneficiary’s bank account. Nova also registered new accounts with a money service provider in the name of the deceased beneficiary and withdrew money from a second bank account held in the beneficiary’s name. He was said to have fraudulently obtained more than $105,000 intended for the deceased beneficiary.

These and many more are instances of how bankers enrich themselves with deceased customers’ funds in their custody.  In the case of a deceased customer whose relatives or friends have no access to the details of his/her account information, the individual’s saved money will be hooked in that bank, as there are no regulations or laws mandating financial institutions in Nigeria to magnanimously hand over deceased customers’ money to their next of kin immediately they receive notification about their death.

Some survivors, especially the next of kin of the deceased, who believe they can access their deceased relatives’ funds sometimes find it difficult, due to its ownership structure.

A discussion with a banker from Union Bank Akure, who doesn’t want his name in print, revealed that before any next of kin of deceased customers could access their funds, they must provide a death certificate and a probate letter from the court, known as a letter of administration. Probate will be required where a deceased dies testate (leaving a will), while a letter of administration is required where the deceased person dies  intestate (without a will).

The delay in obtaining these documents has made it easy for bankers to divert funds of  customers’ who are deceased, which family members couldn’t access due to the bottleneck processes attached to it. It is more difficult for poor people who just died unnoticed or unannounced. This resulted in the accumulation of unclaimed funds with financial institutions, part of which some greedy bankers have devised fraudulent means to divert for their personal use.

The financial sector in Nigeria has continued to record more dormant accounts, and according to the Central Bank of Nigeria, an account will be termed dormant if there are no transactions carried out on it after a period of six months. The difficulty in securing letters of administration, and even when they obtain one, some bank  staff often list other conditions that are difficult to meet, causes many deceased customers’ accounts to become dormant.

The amount of unclaimed funds in commercial banks is estimated to be about N1.3 trillion, excluding the stolen figures by the bankers. This has led to increasing advocacy for legislation to mandate banks to provide a Payable on Death (PoD) form to every account holder. This is a legal document used in banking that designates beneficiaries to receive the funds in a bank account upon the account holder’s death. It allows account holders to specify who will inherit their assets without the need for probate proceedings.

In his contribution, a financial expert in Ondo State, Mr. Bankole Olaoluwa described the attitude of stealing deceased customers’ money by bankers as unethical and a breach of trust, saying, “that is criminal.”

According to him, releasing deceased customers’ money shouldn’t involve any bottleneck, noting that there’s what is called ‘Know Your Customer’ policy in banking, which every bank is supposed to follow.

He explained that banks should know everything about their customers and be able to identify their next of kin by verifying his/her identity and location at the period of opening the account. This, according to him, would eradicate any difficulty associated with accessing customers’ funds after their demise and protect the money from being fraudulently diverted by some bankers.

He, however, hinted that the release of a deceased customer’s funds could be difficult in a situation where there is a misunderstanding within the family, probably being a polygamous one, and this serves as an avenue for some bankers to tamper with the money due to the long period of transactions.

A human rights lawyer, Dr. Lucas Koyejo, noted that if members of any deceased person’s family encounter frustration in accessing their loved ones’ funds in a particular bank, having provided all the necessary documents, as stipulated by the financial laws of the CBN, they have the right to approach the court of law or the human rights commission for assistance.

He asserted that the N1.3 trillion unclaimed funds announced by the CBN probably belonged to customers whose families couldn’t provide enough evidence to prove that they’re truly entitled to the funds, noting that banking institutions would not release such money, which some fraudulent bankers see as an opportunity to divert for their personal usage.