Digital Errors: How Citizens Steal Millions Through Accidental Bank Transfers

This examines how accidental bank transfers are becoming a troubling feature of Nigeria’s cashless economy, where some recipients quickly spend, hide, and a worrying few brazenly refuse to refund money sent in error to their accounts.

When Richard Okoye received a credit alert of about N300,000 on his phone one morning, he stared at the screen in disbelief.

As it turned out, the money had been mistakenly transferred into his account by the old-generation bank he used.

For a schoolteacher surviving on modest wages, the sudden windfall felt like a rare stroke of fortune. His wife, however, was less persuaded. With a mix of suspicion and curiosity, she asked where the money had come from. Okoye had no clear answer.

All he knew was that the alert carried the name of his bank and that no explanation accompanied it.

At first, doubt lingered. He suspected it might be an error. But caution soon gave way to excitement.

Within hours, the then 39-year-old made his way to the nearest ATM and withdrew a large portion of the money.

What followed was a spending spree driven by relief and delight: a hurried trip to the market to purchase items he had long postponed, followed by a stop at a nearby pub, where drinks flowed freely.

To Okoye, the money felt almost divine, reminiscent of the biblical account of the prophet Elijah, sustained in famine by bread and meat delivered by ravens.

But this providence, it turned out, came with consequences.

After about three months, the bank called Richard and asked him to return the money, explaining that it had been transferred to his account in error.

“That was when he called me and asked for N300,000, but I couldn’t raise the money. All I had was for my building project at the time.

“The bank was threatening to arrest him. In fact, they had already reported him to the police, and the police had started calling him on the phone, too.

“After much stress, he refunded the money to the bank; otherwise, he would have been arrested, charged in court, and jailed. His experience was eye-opening,” one of his relatives, Benjamin, recounted to reporters.

‘I sent N500,500 instead of N50,500’

On November 21 last year, a legal practitioner, Ibrahim Lawal, was in Benin City, Edo State, where he attended the Nigerian Bar Association National Executive Council meeting.

While in the city, the chairman of the NBA Ibadan branch stopped at a market, where he patronised a palm oil seller and paid via bank transfer to a Point of Sale terminal.

Driven by Central Bank of Nigeria initiatives, POS agents have become ubiquitous in Nigerian markets, offering digital services such as cash withdrawals, transfers and bill payments, far beyond simple cash access.

“The transfer was done to a POS account number,” Lawal told Saturday PUNCH. “But instead of sending N50,500, I unknowingly transferred N500,500 to the POS account.

“I did not receive any alert, and the POS operator also did not disclose that I had sent more than the required amount. When I later realised that I had paid N450,000 more than I was supposed to, I became distressed.”

Fortunately for Lawal, both a friend and his wife were present at the Bar Centre when he discovered the error.

“Folajuwon Banjo volunteered to represent me by helping to obtain an order for reversal. My account officer, Opeyemi Amole, also escalated the matter to the digital bank I paid into.

“Truthfully, I had lost hope of recovery after being informed that there was no money in the recipient’s account. But at about 11.am on Tuesday, January 6, 2026, I received an alert of N450,000, being a reversal of the money. It truly felt like a New Year’s gift,” he added.

Erroneous bank transfers

Mistaken bank transfers, often referred to as “wrong transfers” or “fat-finger errors”, are becoming an increasingly troubling feature of Nigeria’s rapidly digitising banking sector.

In many cases, recipients refuse to return funds, creating distress for senders and, in some instances, forcing legal intervention.

A report published by EdPlugNG in November 2025 revealed that nearly half of Nigerian banking users suffered financial loss due to interface-related errors within the previous 12 months.

This challenges the popular narrative that network failure is the sole culprit in Nigeria’s digital banking woes.

With the acceleration of the CBN’s cashless policy, transaction volumes through mobile apps and USSD platforms have surged.

However, while banks invest heavily in server capacity, far less attention appears to have been paid to human–computer interaction design.

The report, which analysed 12,000 social media support tickets, found that 42 per cent of respondents admitted to making at least one irreversible mistake, such as a wrong transfer or excessive airtime purchase, within the past year.

One in five users, representing 19 per cent, reported making minor errors, including clicking the wrong button or restarting failed transactions, on a weekly basis.

The study identified the “zero glitch” as the leading cause of financial loss, accounting for 34 per cent of reported cases. This typically involved users adding an extra zero, sending N100,000 instead of N10,000, often due to apps failing to auto-format figures with commas in real time.

Another 15 per cent of cases were classified as classic “fat-finger errors,” involving the selection of the wrong beneficiary from saved contact lists.

The report also identified a specific “fatigue window,” noting that such errors were three times more likely to occur between 9pm and 11pm.

A senior banker at a new-generation bank, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media, told reporters, that banks sometimes mistakenly credit customers, often due to technological glitches during system upgrades or payment platform failures.

“These errors can occur when the wrong account number or amount is entered into the system. Software bugs can also cause funds to land in unintended accounts, whether dormant or active.

“In rare cases, such funds may even be linked to fraud. In all instances, recipients are required to contact their banks because reversals must follow strict regulatory procedures,” he explained.

Blocked by a recipient

When Farouq Bello (not his real name), a businessman, transferred N350,000 to one of his friends in urgent need of financial support for a project, he reclined in his chair with a sigh of relief.

But this changed when his friend called him back an hour later that evening of January 12 to inform him that he had not received any credit alert.

A knot of anxiety formed as Bello hurriedly reopened the banking app to recheck the transaction details. That was when the mistake stared back at him: the money had been sent to a wrong account, bearing the name Abiodun (surname withheld).

“Immediately, I reached out to him politely, explained that it was a mistake and asked him to refund the money,” Bello said. “Instead of doing the normal human thing and returning what was not his, this guy blocked me.”

He tried again, calling from another line, but that number was blocked as well. Growing increasingly desperate, Bello reached out to a friend, Yusuf, asking if there was any way to trace the recipient or persuade him to return the funds.

“We tried to gather everything we could, his phone number, his picture, any useful information at all. Later, another brother reached out to him and advised him to refund the money so he wouldn’t get himself into trouble. He didn’t respond either because he blocked him too,” Bello recounted.

One of Bello’s friends eventually managed to track Abiodun’s home address through his phone number, discovering that he resides in Ilorin, Kwara State.

Using yet another phone number, Yusuf finally got through to the recipient. What followed, Bello said, was a string of shifting explanations.

“He first claimed only N150,000 was left. Then he said his father was sick. Then another story came up. Long story short, he refunded just N50,000,” Bello said.

According to him, Abiodun promised to send the balance within “two or three days”, claiming that was all he could afford at the time. But weeks later, the promise remains unfulfilled.

Bello added that even after his friends shared Abiodun’s details on X and Facebook, appealing to the public to urge him to return the money, the outstanding N100,000 has yet to be refunded.

Further explaining the causes of such personal erroneous transfers, a finance analyst, Caleb Ohaeri, told reporters that most mistakes occur due to similarities in bank account numbers, missing digits, or confusion over names.

He said the first step for anyone who makes such an error is to immediately contact their bank’s customer care service and report the transaction as a mistake.

“For someone who receives money like this and does not voluntarily reach out to the sender to return it, I don’t think that alone constitutes a crime,” Ohaeri said.

“However, once a proper request is made and the recipient refuses to refund the money, a case can be opened, and it may be treated as fraud.”

He added that mistaken transfers are more common with mobile and digital banking apps, which often require only a phone number, unlike traditional banking systems.

“The sender should report the issue through the app, but there is no absolute guarantee of a refund. These platforms have built-in security prompts that ask users to confirm the recipient’s details. That is why people are advised to stay calm and double-check details before completing transfers,” he explained.

Directives and regulations from the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Central Bank of Nigeria, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission make it clear that money that unexpectedly appears in a bank account is not “free money” and may be linked to fraud or an erroneous transfer.

Yet, for some recipients, these rules appear to fall on deaf ears.

One such case is that of Kingsley Ojo, who unlawfully took possession of more than N1.3bn belonging to a bank.

According to the EFCC, the funds were mistakenly credited to Ojo’s account due to system glitches.

Investigations revealed that upon receiving the money, Ojo “transferred a good measure of it to the bank accounts of his mother, Itohan Ojo, and his sister, Edith Okoro Osaretin, and committed part of the money to the completion of his building project and the funding of a new flamboyant lifestyle.”