The fraud came to light through an affidavit submitted by Gbenga Ojerinde, a fraud investigation officer at LOTUS Bank, and filed by Lagos attorney Efe Eze-Iyamu. The affidavit revealed that questionable Mudarabah profits were credited to customer accounts, prompting a detailed investigation covering January 2023 to May 2024.

The investigation uncovered fraudulent activities by Abdulkarim Arome Mohammed, a member of the Financial Control Department at the bank. Mohammed is accused of misusing his system access to allocate profits to three ineligible accounts. These accounts included one belonging to his spouse, Khadijah Aliyu Shuaib (a FINCON Officer responsible for profit allocation), and two others linked to Peter Daniel and Emmanuel Ocheja Odogwu. 

The total amount involved in the fraud is N336,993,863.35. It was discovered that funds from Peter Daniel’s account were transferred to his personal accounts across two different banks. Moreover, significant amounts from Khadijah Aliyu Shuaibu’s account were redirected to Cresco Oil & Gas Limited, a company co-owned by Mohammed, his wife, and Peter Daniel.

Upon discovering these fraudulent activities, LOTUS Bank reported the incident to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS). NIBSS then informed the relevant banks to freeze the implicated accounts and reverse the fraudulent transactions.