On Saturday, September 3,Mrs. Olajumoke Adewole, a
nursing mother, was relaxing with her baby 2016
when her housemaid, Esther headed to the bank to
withdraw the sum of N30,000 for her mistress . She
headed to a branch of one of the banks around
Kollington Bus Stop (bank’s name withheld) in
Alagbado area of Lagos State ..
Moments later, Mrs. Adewole received two separate
debit alerts indicating that Esther had withdrawn the
sum of N30,000 from her bank account as she was
instructed.
But confusion would later set in for the mother of
three. More than an hour after she received the debit
alerts, her maid failed to return home.
“My fear was compounded when repeated calls to her
mobile line indicated that it had been switched off,”
she recalled.
According to her, a few people who heard the news
insinuated the young lady might have escaped with
the money.
“But I was convinced that Esther wouldn’t do
such a thing. In fact, she was literally in charge
of the account: at my instructions she would
withdraw money with my ATM card to buy
things we needed at home ranging from
foodstuffs to paying my children’s school fees.
So I didn’t believe Esther would run away
because of N30,000,” she said.
Amid her confusion, Mrs. Adewole received a
call from a stranger who told her Esther was
found around Ifo.
“I couldn’t fathom what she could have gone to
do at Ifo after withdrawing the money at Kola.
My husband had returned home when the call
came so we drove straight to Ilepa, where we
eventually found her,” she said.
Esther’s account on how she found herself at Ilepa in
Ifo, Ogun State was confounding.
“I remember I met a few people who came to
use the ATM on queue and after a few minutes
it was my turn to use the machine. I made two
withdrawals – the first, a N20,000 withdrawal,
and the second, N10,000. That’s everything I can
remember except that I later found myself in a
strange place without the money and the ATM
card as well as my phone,” she recalled.
Esther was just one of the recent victims of voodoo
fraudsters who lurk around banks to defraud
unsuspecting bank customers without attracting the
attention of security personnel. Although their modes
of operation differ, findings by Sunday Sun clearly
show that the perpetrators of this crime employ juju
in their operations.
A drama of similar spectacle played out at Oshodi Bus
Stop on Friday May 6, 2016 when a woman lost the
money she was taking to the bank, in a mysterious
circumstance.
The woman, who simply identified herself as Comfort,
Sunday Sun gathered, was heading to the branch of a
new generation bank (name withheld) in the area
when a woman curiously touched the paper bag
containing the money she was meant to deposit in the
bank.
The woman said the money, a sum of N30,000, was
given to her by the manager of her company, to
deposit in the company’s account.
Sunday Sun’s correspondent, who was at the scene of
the incident, saw the lady being chased away by a
team of policemen from Akinpelu Police Station, when
she approached them for help.
Narrating her ordeal to passersby, who gathered
round her, the woman said amid tears:
“The money was given to me by my boss to
deposit in a bank. But when I got to that point,
one fat woman approached me and touched me.
Immediately she did that she went into the
bank.
Moments later, I checked the paper bag
containing the money only to discover that
everything in the bag had turned to pieces of
papers.”
But a trader, who claimed to have witnessed the
scene when the woman touched the victim, said
the woman made a u-turn after she discovered
that her victim had gone and then boarded a
bus immediately.
Men are not immune from this new trend of crime as
a couple of them claimed to have fallen victims in the
recent past. One of them is Mr. Adeniyi Aremu, a civil
servant who recounted his ordeal in the hand of a
fraudster who pretended to be a bank customer in
need of N500 notes in exchange for the N1000 notes he
had on him.
“I can’t correctly recall the actual date now but I
still remember that it was in the build up to last
year’s general election,” he began.
“It happened at a branch of (bank name
withheld) at Adealu, Iyana-Ipaja. I was at the
bank to make a withdrawal of N50, 000 across
the counter and I was paid with N500 notes. So I
begged the lady who attended to me to change
the money to N1000 notes because I felt it
would make my pocket to be bulky but she
declined on the grounds that she only had N500
notes to pay out to customers.
“As I made to move out of the bank, a middle-
aged man who, possibly had overheard my
conversation with the lady, approached me and
requested me to give him the N500 notes in
exchange for N1000, which I gladly obliged.
“He handed the N1000 notes, which he brought
from his pocket to me but after counting the
money, I discovered it was 46 pieces instead of
50 pieces. I told him the money wasn’t complete
but he insisted it was complete. So I had to
recount money which was still short of N4000.
“At that point I became angry and handed the
money back to him but after recounting he
discovered it was short of N4000. He later
dipped his hand into his pocket and added the
remaining four pieces of N1,000 notes. I felt
there was no need recounting the money so I
gave him the N500 notes I had.
“Surprisingly, the money was short of N20,000
when I got home and recounted it. I couldn’t
really explain how it happened, I still find it
difficult to explain,” he said.
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