A number of citizens, customers of Raiffeisen Bank Albania, have raised concerns on social media that significant amounts of money appear to be missing from their bank accounts, without claiming to have carried out the respective transactions themselves.
According to reports published by Kapitali, the sums in some cases reach hundreds of euros, while various citizens claim they have identified differences of 500 to 1,000 euros in their account balances.
The outlet claims to have also verified one specific case, in which a customer had around 100,000 lek in the account before making a small purchase.
During the day today, the customer had carried out a transaction of around 1,100 lek. However, after the payment, according to the SMS received from the bank, the balance on the account stood at less than 50,000 lek.
In this way, according to the complaint, in addition to the amount spent on the purchase, the account showed a difference of nearly 50,000 lek, or more than 500 euros.
Similar reports have also been published by other citizens on social media, who claim they have found significant shortages in their accounts.
Another concern raised by customers relates to difficulty contacting the bank’s service department. Some of them say they tried several times to communicate with Raiffeisen Bank Albania, but were unable to receive a response through the contact lines.
The situation takes on particular importance also because only a few days earlier Raiffeisen had warned customers about “smishing” fraud attempts.
In the bank’s notice, reference was made to fraudulent SMS messages aimed at persuading users to provide their banking details or click on fake links.
However, at this stage it has not been made clear whether the cases reported today are linked to these fraud attempts, to unauthorized transactions, to a technical problem in the display of account balances, or to another cause.
The claim that the bank is under a cyberattack and that money is being taken from customers’ accounts through it was reported by Kapitali, but remains to be officially confirmed by Raiffeisen Bank Albania or the relevant authorities.
A reaction from the bank is expected to clarify the scale of the problem, the number of affected customers, the cause of the reported differences, and how any unauthorized transactions will be handled.
The incident also raises the issue of the security of banking systems and customer protection at a time when an ever-larger share of financial services is being carried out digitally.
Raiffeisen Bank Albania still has to publicly clarify whether this is a system problem, fraud against customers, or a cybersecurity incident.
Source: Kapitali