How employee stole $1.6m from Travelex Group

The Ikeja Special Offences Court, Lagos on Wednesday heard how one Ezeogo Ogbu, an employee of Travelex Retail Nigeria Limited, stole $1.6 million from the foreign exchange company.

Ogbu allegedly committed the offence with a Bureau De Change operator (BDC), Nwamadi Nnamdi, between 2018 and 2019.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) docked the duo on an eight-count charge of conspiracy, stealing, fraudulent false accounting and unauthorized modification of computer data.

In his testimony, Mr. Christopher Nicholas Conway, the Global Head of Travelex Group, gave graphic details of how the money was stolen.

The prosecution witness said: “Travelex is based in Lagos and had a contract with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to supply US dollars to BDC operatives in Lagos.

“To apply for US dollars, the BDCs must fulfil three criteria namely: they must be authorized by CBN; they must apply to collect dollars through Travelex; They must have made full payment prior to collection.

“But in this case, the first two criteria were always fulfilled but unfortunately, sufficient payments were not made on numerous occasions.

“It was the job of the first defendant, Ogbu, to access Travelex bank account by an online portal for which he had a unique user code. Ogbu was responsible for copying the bank account information to an excel spreadsheet referred to as ‘The Consolidate inflow’.

“…As part of reconciliation, our finance team noticed there was a large short fall in an account that was specifically intended for use in relation to the supply of the US dollars. However, fraud was suspected and I was asked to investigate.

“It quickly became clear that a few BDCs had collected more cash than they had paid for….

“I looked at them for a two-year period from 2018- 2019 and found that significant sums have been taken without payment. I was then satisfied that money has been taken.

“I decided to look closed at the consolidated inflow spreadsheet, and discovered that many of the inflows between April and August 2019 have been deleted. But it was not known who had deleted those files online.

“However, some inflows were available and were dated prior to April 2018 and after August 2019. Meanwhile, I reviewed the access logs for the portal for the time frame of the offences and the 1st defendant, Ogbu, is the only person accessed the bank account on every single occasions.

“He committed most of the fraud because he was the only person to access the banking code. The 1st defendant left Travelex on his own at the end of 2019.

“Having identified each individual participation for each transaction, based on the fraud value, I concluded that the 1st defendant was involved as well as people associated with 4 BDCs in which the 2nd defendant is one of them.”

Justice Mojisola Dada adjourned the matter till December 6 and 7 for cross examination of the witness.