********** payment - no assistance

I recently had a ********** transaction on my account. 4 overseas PayPal transactions of a few thousand rands took place. I reported this immediately to my bank and I have been given the run around. I have called, emailed, went into a branch and all I got is a case/ reference number and told I will be contacted in 8 hours, its definitely been 5 days! My issue is my bank can't even help me as a client understand the length of the process. This is thousands of my money and no one can tell me when I am getting it back. Truly unacceptable! Something similar has happened with 2 other people that I know on Absa and they had to go through great lengths to get their money back. It is sad to see that Absa doesn't have an effective strategy to deal with ********** cases that have clearly been taking place frequently.