Commercial Bank of Ethiopia loses $40 million to glitch, calls on students to return stolen cash.
The staff of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) went into panic mode when they realized customers had access to more money than they had in their accounts due to a glitch in CBE’s systems.
Unfortunately, before the glitch was noticed by the bank’s authorities, over $40 million had been taken from the bank. Abie Sano, CBE President has identified students as the demographic mainly responsible for the cash grab. The largest bank in the country is now in trouble as they try to get back a boatload of money after many customers took advantage of the glitch.
For those wondering how it happened. On Saturday, March 16, the gist of the glitch spread on campuses in the country through messaging apps and phone calls. Before long, ATM queues across the country were as long as Rapunzel’s hair, with one student of Jimma University reporting to BBC that students continued to withdraw money they did not own, until police officers came to shut it all down.
The CBE is clearly trusted by the people, with over 38 million account holders. The bank has been operating for over 80 years. The bank had called the incident a glitch during maintenance, but said nothing about the missing cash.
Sano insists it is not a cyberattack and that all accounts are still secure. Some Universities have called out to the students’ integrity, urging them to submit cash they had withdrawn or taken that they did not own.
To incentivize students to return the stolen money, Sano has declared that returning the money will not get you in trouble, but it is still very difficult to convince students going to tough financial times to give up the money.
