Damilola Timilehin, Ibadan
On June 18, Solomon James, a point-of-sale operator in Kaduna State, was going about his daily activities when his phone kept screaming a series of debit alerts that would later amount to N1 million.
James told FIJ that after many failed attempts to stop the continual unauthorised transaction, a strange caller who identified himself as an OPay employee and agent told him the OPay team was aware of what had just happened on his account and that he would need to transfer the exact sum withdrawn from his account on or before 7 pm the following day to get his money.
Confused because he had not been in this type of situation until then, James rallied around to gather all the money he had saved elsewhere, but it was not enough, and so he transferred N890,000 the following day, hoping to get his money back.
He said he waited for the time to turn 7 pm. on June 19, and to date, he’s still waiting. According to James, he did not realise that what he experienced was a scam until days after the incident.
“I should have known that it was a scam, but I did not realise it on time. I tried calling the number that I reached out to several times, but it did not connect,” James told FIJ.
“When I went to the OPay office in Kaduna to complain about what happened, they asked for a court affidavit, which I provided. They said they would forward it to the headquarters in Lagos. The next time I went there, they said they had forwarded it already. And whenever I complain, they say they will get back to me. ”
When FIJ called the number that contacted the source, it did not connect. A text message sent to the number had not been responded to at press time.
When contacted, Adeyemi Adekunle, spokesperson for OPay, said that an OPay agent would not reach out to anyone to ask any questions.
