A customer of Unity Bank, Tersugh Wuese Nelson has dragged the bank before a High Court of Justice in Makurdi, Benue State for, claiming unauthorized debits to the tune of N324,000 from his account.

Theliberationnews gathered that On Saturday, August 26, 2023, Tersugh, to his utmost dismay, woke up and discovered 12 debit transactions on his account through email notifications.

These debit transactions occurred in quick succession, with 10 of them happening within two minutes on Friday, August 25, 2023, at about 11:51pm, while the other two happened at about 2:49am on Saturday 26th August, 2023.

Upon discovering the debits, Tersugh immediately emailed the bank, stating that he did not initiate or authorize the transactions. After several email exchanges, Unity Bank informed him in October 2023 that their investigation revealed the disputed transactions were web-based, conducted using his ATM card details (PAN, PIN, expiry date, and CVV) via the Flutterwave platform.

The bank detailed that the transactions were authenticated using Tersugh’s ATM card PIN, which only he knew, and that their review of the card activity logs did not indicate any PIN tries or changes prior to the transactions.

This, the bank argued, indicated that the person conducting the transactions knew Tersugh’s PIN. Unity Bank further claimed that they had reached out to Flutterwave for a possible refund, but Flutterwave declined, stating that the value was given to the cardholder.

Consequently, the bank concluded that, in accordance with CBN regulations on liability shift regarding card and PIN usage, it was not liable for the unauthorized transactions, as Tersugh’s ATM card details and PIN were used to validate the transactions.

Rejecting the bank’s findings, Tersugh, in a suit filed at the High Court of Justice in Makurdi, Benue State (Case No.: MHC/215/2024: Tersugh Wuese Nelson v. Unity Bank Plc.) alleged that the bank was negligent in protecting his funds by failing to implement behavioral monitoring systems and robust fraud monitoring tools to detect and block suspicious transactions in real time, as required by CBN regulations.

Tersugh is requesting that the court order Unity Bank to refund the N324,000 debited from his account without authorization. Additionally, he is demanding N10 million in damages from the bank