Caught In A Big Lie

We confess freely and without shame that numbers frighten us. Calculators send cold shivers down our editorial spine. And yet, here is where the story takes a delicious turn; it turns out that Nedbank, custodian of billions in South African rands, a gleaming monument of financial sophistication headquartered in the leafy suburbs of Sandton, apparently shares our affliction. The difference, of course, is that we are not charging our audience monthly banking fees.

Let us set the scene.

Ms Jijana, a Cape Town woman of the Android persuasion, a fact that will shortly return to; the centrepiece of Nedbank's masterwork in logic, had the misfortune of losing her debit card and subsequently suffering fraudulent transactions. A relatable tragedy. One would imagine that a multibillion-rand institution, armed with battalions of compliance officers, risk analysts, and presumably at least one person who has used a calendar, might handle this with some competence.

One would be wrong.

When uSpiked Data Journalists arrived, with simple R15 calculators bought from a Cape Town discount store in trembling hands, to inquire about the reimbursement figures, Nedbank's Media Office (bless their keyboards) did not simply apologise and correct the numbers. No, that would be too pedestrian. Instead, they deployed the ancient corporate art of partial responses, trickling out information across thirteen emails and several WhatsApp messages between 26 February and 6 March 2026, like a leaky tap that has been told it is actually a fountain.

And then oh, at glorious moment, seeming to be in a rush to convince us how dedicately they had been working on responding to our queries, they shared the spreadsheet, attached to an email to uSpiked dated 2 March, 2026 18:20 (SAT).

This spreadsheet became a vital datapoint for us. We plugged the spreadsheet onto our data processing system, and it spoke volumes.

Pure Gold for any Investigative Journalist: The Spreadsheet That Knew Too Much

Three days later, in a supplementary email to uSpiked dated 5 March, 2026 16:25 (SAT), in response to our demand to know why debits related to Apple Pay performed by the zombie card weren’t reimbursed, Nedbank declared “At the time of the transactions, we had no record indicating that the client had previously visited the branch to report her card as being lost prior to its being linked to the digital wallet.”

Dear reader, if you are pulling your hair off the scalp of your head, we feel you. We equally lost it as well, and that’s when we knew the train had left the rails. So in a caps-lock, an email left our Editor’s desk: “THAT IS UNQUESTIONABLY FALSE; UNLESS WE ARE WORKING ON DIFFERENT CALENDARS.  IT IS INDISPUTABLE THAT JINANA REPORTED THE LOST DEBIT CARD ON FRIDAY 02 MAY, 2025 AT YOUR SEA POINT BRANCH. YOUR CONSULTANT WHO ISSUED THE NEW DEBIT CARD, FOR REASONS YOU ARE YET TO PROVIDE, FAILED TO DISABLE (CANCEL) THE LOST/STOLEN CARD. MS JINANA USED THE NEW CARD ON MONDAY, 5 MAY, 2025, TO MAKE AN ATM DEPOSIT OF R2,900.00 (REF0810243669JEFF). TO SHOW THAT YOUR BANKERS WHO HANLED THIS CLAIM AFTER WE (uSpiked) CAME TO YOU KNEW WHERE THEY WENT WRONG, BUT FOR WHATEVER REASONS DECIDED TO FIND A WAY TO MAKE YOUR CLIENT SHARE LIABILITY. LET US REFER YOU BACK TO THEIR SPREADSHEET THAT YOU SHARED WITH US. THE APPLE PAY AND TAP & GO (WHICH THEY COLOUR-CODED RED, WERE BETWEEN 12 MAY 2025 AND 20 MAY, 2025… THOSE DATES ARE SURELY AFTER 2 MAY, 2025.” 

If the all Caps portion of our email somewhat intimidated the Sandton godfathers, then we achieved our intention.

 When a corporation hands a data team their own spreadsheet (in our newsroom, we call such work-products notes) to justify their calculations, they have either achieved a profound philosophical detachment from consequences, or they have simply not looked at the spreadsheet themselves. Nedbank, it appears, opted for the latter.

The bank had colour-coded certain transactions in red (the Apple Pay wallet activation and the Tap & Go transactions and declared, with the unshakeable confidence of a lady who has never been wrong because she has never checked, that these could not be refunded. The bankers’ reasoning? ‘At the time of the transactions, the client had not yet reported the card as lost' is more insulting than the sections of our email of Thursday, 5 March, 2025 20:20 (SAT) that was on Caps-lock. Who is Nedbank trying to fool?

Breath-taking indeed?

Let us apply what scholars of time call a calendar to this reasoning. The card was reported lost on 2 May 2025. The Apple Pay wallet was activated, and the Tap & Go transactions occurred between 12 May and 20 May 2025. For those following along at home: May 12th comes after May 2nd. This is not, we stress, a matter of opinion.

But wait; there is more. Ms Jijana has been, throughout this entire saga, an Android phone user. Android. As in: not Apple. As in: the phone in her pocket is constitutionally, philosophically, and practically incapable of activating an Apple Pay wallet. This detail, one might reasonably assume, would give any competent fraud investigator pause. At Nedbank, it apparently gave them a spreadsheet.

When the uSpiked Investigative Team, with the patience of saints and the persistence of auditors, pointed all of these out, Nedbank's response was a masterclass in corporate insouciance. The matter, they declared, was resolved. Finish and klaar!

Quoting them directly is warranted at this point: “…Thank you for your response.

“Throughout our correspondence we provided all the information available to us and confirmed that our client was not at fault in this matter. We fully recognised the frustration and inconvenience experienced and offered our client a gesture of goodwill.

“From Nedbank’s perspective, we consider this matter resolved. However, we encourage our client to contact us directly should they require any further assistance or information.” [Wrong pronoun for your client-Editor]

How a South African banking giant, armed with colour-coded Excel cells and the audacity of a Bond villain, tried to make a fraud victim the prime suspect — and handed investigators the smoking gun themselves.

They had, after all, provided all available information and offered a goodwill gesture. What more could a defrauded client possibly want? How about some Accuracy and Accountability? The correct amount of her own money returned to her?

The final communiqué from Sandton was brief, polished, and carried the unmistakable energy of a middle finger in a pinstripe suit: "From Nedbank's perspective, we consider this matter resolved."

Of course you do.

Because in the rarefied world of multibillion-rand banking, "resolved" means: we have decided to stop answering questions. It means: our client is welcome to contact us directly, armed with the knowledge that we will tell them exactly what we have already told them. It means: try us.

And so there it is; the full, magnificent spectacle of a financial institution that got its sums wrong, attributed fraud to a woman whose phone cannot run the app in question, collected an extra R597.71 on top of the stolen sums of the very money it was reimbursing, short-changed her on what was exactly due to her and then declared victory.

uSpiked’s simple challenge to be proven wrong wasn’t even considered. The matter was simply resolved.

Nedbank, it seems, has not only mastered the art of banking. They have mastered the art of being unreachable, irrefutable, and above all, correct, especially when they are not.

Armed with the SAPS fraud-case reference (Case No 153/6/2025) and with the knowledge that the Zombie Card was busy in realtime, the least the Fraud/Risk expert at Nedbank should have done, was to reach out to Detective Serg. L Tetani to track the movements of the thieves as they moved around, Cape Town's stores. They opted not to. and several months later, we may not even be able to obtain footage from CCTV dotting the City. That was never their intention. 

uSpiked stands by its figures. Its calculator, unlike some institutions, has been checked.