₦4.6m Vanishes From GTBank Account in Unauthorised Transfer, Raising Fresh Questions Over Fraud Controls

A GTBank customer has lost ₦4.6 million in an unauthorised transfer to a digital wallet, raising fresh questions about how quickly banks and fintechs can detect and stop suspected account takeover and payment fraud.

The customer, Onifade Isaac, said the money was transferred from his GTBank account on August 22 through the bank’s mobile application to a Pocket App account belonging to Zahara’u Iliyasu.

Isaac said he did not initiate the transaction and received neither an OTP nor an SMS alert before the money left his account. His phone, he said, remained in his possession and was functioning normally at the time.

He reported the incident to GTBank and the police. A police extract dated August 27 recorded his complaint over the unauthorised transfer.

GTBank subsequently blocked Isaac’s account and said the transaction had been escalated to the receiving bank. Isaac was also informed that a “Do Not Debit” instruction had been placed on the recipient account.

The money, however, had reportedly already been withdrawn.

That detail puts the focus on the increasingly narrow window available to financial institutions once suspected fraud is detected. An alert, freeze or interbank notification has little value if stolen funds can be withdrawn or moved before the receiving institution can act.

For compliance and fraud teams, the case highlights the distinction between authentication and genuine customer authorisation. A transaction appearing to have passed through a legitimate digital channel does not necessarily establish that the account holder initiated it.

The incident also exposes the growing importance of cooperation between banks, fintechs and payment platforms. Once disputed funds move from a bank into a wallet or another institution, tracing and recovering the money becomes a race against time.

The broader compliance question is whether Nigerian financial institutions can identify abnormal transactions quickly enough to intervene before the money disappears.

GTBank had not publicly responded to the allegations at the time of reporting.