Nigerian fintech company Flutterwave has dismissed media claims that the company lost ₦2.9 billion to hackers and filed a motion to freeze accounts connected with the stolen funds.
The statement released by the company on Sunday, 5th of March 2023 reassured customers of utmost security and continuous collaboration with other financial institutions and law enforcement agencies to ensure a safe and secure ecosystem.
“We want to reassure you that Flutterwave has not been hacked. As a financial institution, we monitor transactions through our transaction monitoring systems and 24-hour fraud desk and review any suspicious activity. We collaborate with other financial institutions and law enforcement agencies to keep our ecosystem safe and secure,” the statement signed by Flutterwave read in part.
“During a routine check of our transaction monitoring system, we identified an unusual trend of transactions on some users’ profiles.
“Our team immediately launched a review (inline with our standard operating procedure), which revealed that some users who had not activated some of our recommended security settings might have been susceptible.
“We want to confirm that no user lost any funds, and we take pride in the fact that our security measures were able to address the issue before any harm could be done to our users.”
This reaction follows a developing story by Techpoint Africa which claimed that hackers transferred over ₦2.9 billion from Flutterwave accounts in February.
According to the Techpoint Africa report, a motion to freeze accounts in 27 financial institutions in Nigeria where some of the money was transferred has been filed.
Alex Onyia (@winexviv) who led a conversation on the alleged hacking on Twitter, claimed Flutterwave has been hacked by a certain Omar Edewor Trades. Urging others to generate a new API Key, Onyia tweeted: “It’s a direct flutterwave hack and all the attempts were done via api calls.”
Another Twitter user moonbiggy.sol @biggyprints also alleged that he got a mail from his bank establishing him as a connection to the acclaimed fraud money.
He said: “This was after over 5 days after a successful trade. My account is locked, can’t access fund inside. Pls is this right? It’s unfair I have zero business with flutterwave or the hack.”
