How a fruit seller lost #5M

I really can not get over the incidence of a fruit seller who lost a whooping #5,000,000! #5 Million! I felt it. And no, he wasn’t robbed. It’s a lengthy but worthy read. Here is the story;

There’s this guy who sells fruits, whom for the sake of this story, will be referred to as Mr AR.  We all know the world is digital now and almost everyone is adopting the e-payment method. Mr. AR was not left behind as he was advised to adopt the method since he has people who buy from him in bulk.

On a certain day, a customer pre-ordered fruits and transferred the money to Mr AR. Days after, he went to Mr AR to pick up the fruits only for him to realize that AR didn’t receive the credit alert. Out of curiosity, the customer asked if Mr AR hasn’t been receiving or following up his bank alerts, and Mr. AR replied he used to follow up on his alerts until a certain incident. In his words;

hmmm … I have about 5 million naira in my account and everything has been wiped from my account.

“What? How?” The customer asked

Mr AR responded “I took my phone to a neighborhood charging shop because I had a low battery. I left it there for a few hours and on getting back to pick the phone, my sim card has been removed from the phone.”

“When did this happen and what have you done?”

“It happened days ago and I haven’t done anything, I don’t even know what to do. I’ve given up already” Mr AR replied.

The customer thought; education and awareness are very important. So he left, leaving the fruit seller to his misery. But he couldn’t wrap his head around the whole situation. 5 whopping million! From someone who’s trying to make ends meet!

He called the fruit seller that night and asked what bank he uses so they could meet there the following morning and requested for his statement of account, before notifying him of the next move to his money recovery.

The fruit seller didn’t bother to call the customer the following morning until he got to the bank and told them his experience and that he needs his account statement.

You won’t believe he was denied his statement and it was at the moment he called his customer and the customer had to go and fight to get the statement.

In short, they got the statement, and found out how the money vanished and where it was transferred to. The money was used for very unnecessary activities. Some of the money was transferred to the Kalo Kalo games and L*** in hundreds of thousands until the money in the account was exhausted.

It was at that point they realized the missing sim was used to transfer all the funds.
The story is long but I needed to share the lesson I’ve personally learnt from it. Imagine a fruit seller who struggles so much everyday to earn a living being defrauded of almost 5 million naira. No one is too small to be defrauded.

Remember The Following Whenever You Have To Charge Your Mobile Device Outside Your Reach

• Remove your sim from your device
• Activate sim PIN
• Avoid easy to guess passwords such as; 1234, 0000, 1990, 1994, 1980, 1111, 2002
• Make sure important details on the phone are not predictable.

Personally, I know how overwhelming cybersecurity can be but with simple tips, you are sure to be on the safe side.