A Kenyan on Twitter (KoT) Lee (@JelaniMK) narrated how a man was swindled by Equity Bank.
She claims that this is a norm and that the bank must be held responsible for the theft of client money through extortion by its staff.
Car hire service
This is the new scam @KeEquityBank is running. So there is a man with a car hire business. He gets called by some guys over the holidays who want to hire cars for a function in Eldoret. They agree on a rate of 145K. They wire the funds & claim they accidentally sent 290K.
The business owner sees on his account: Account bal: includes 290k but Available bal is still the amount he had. Usually the case for when a cheque has been written to you & the money hasn’t reflected yet. He agrees to refund the extra cash once it is loaded into his account
Then the calls begin from the conmen & the bank telling the business owner to wire them 75k if he has on Mpesa because it’s an emergency. Please note this is all happening within a 24 hour period. It’s not days. The business owner insists that once the money is cleared he will refund the extra. But he can’t send from his existing money till the cash reflects. Soon they are calling for 25k. Which he refuses to send.
At this point Equity Bank calls to say, they’ve noticed the transaction was fraudulent & they’ve cancelled it. The calls from the conmen immediately stop. When the business owner checks his account he finds They’ve deducted KES 2K.
READ: Hidden News: Thieves stole from Transnational Bank in 2018 – Part 4
On following up with the bank, they tell him that it’s not their fault; that the transaction is fraudulent so they are charging him for the fake transaction.
I’ve seen enough posts about Equity Bank’s shortcomings. At this point if you bank with Equity or any of the other shitty banks in a Kenyan market with 44 banks (some less shitty than Equity) then you’ve earned the right to be defrauded. Posting here won’t help you
Christian Wolff, @Billyonairre1
Where is CBK?
Equity Bank has more than 9M customers. If they take KES 2k & other arbitrary amounts from even 4M customers you can imagine how much money they’d be making. We’re sick of this nonsense. At this point I think a class action suit would be a good way to go.
All Equity Bank who’ve lost money in this way + in other ways because they have staff who are thieves or security systems that don’t work as well as fraudulent policies to steal from customers, should come together & sue them. This isn’t about the 2k. It’s about the principal.
The man has written to Central Bank of Kenya @CBKKenya & Equity Bank @KeEquityBank & someone from Equity has called to gaslight him & blame him for the situation. Why should I be penalized if someone sends me money & then cancels the transaction? How is it my problem?
It’s really very embarrassing and I’m annoyed. Equity Bank, you better refund that old man his money with immediate effect.
Honestly feel like I’d like to dedicate my time finding your victims & filing a PIL to make you pay damages to all these people.
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