The economic situation keeps on deteriorating day by day, job opportunities nowhere to be found, leaving most with nothing to do but come up with creative scams ok let’s say “unique” ways of making a quick buck.

The rate at which people get scammed these days is quite alarming, Nigeria being the poverty capital of the world is no exception. Amazing how so many foreigners have been duped by stranded Nigerian Princes.

We Nigerians are no exception to this sad form of daylight robbery. We are constantly bombarded with new tricks by these scammers, from credit card fraud to social media scams.

Today, we’re going to tell you about the list of top Nigerian scams to look out for, and of course, avoid!

Prize money.
We see this a lot on social media, a simple spin the wheel game or one quick and easy trivia on facebook for a prize of N1000 airtime. When you win the game, they ask for your detail e.g. email, date of birth, full name, state of origin. These might not look like much, but they’ll use these details at later times for phone calls and spam emails.

Government officials.
Some scammers with big balls sometimes try to take the physical approach, coming to your house as PHCN officials or Water services and claim they want to do a routine check on your meter or pipes. They just want to size up your house so as to plan for a later date of the robbery.

Catfishing.
So a hot girl follows you on twitter, everything seems to check out, you slide into the DMs because no time, the convo’s going well, already planning on asking her out, till you see her on a “Guy’s lets show them ourselves” thread and then realise that your crush is actually one buff guy, thank your lucky stars.

Most times the victims end up sending money to the catfish accounts in a bid to win their love not knowing they’re sending money to one random guy perched on a laptop somewhere.

Social Media Stores.
Social media has brought so much good to the world, especially in the market place. Anyone can go online and open a business account online bringing his or herself closer to their customers which is great, but these days, its really hard to know who is legit or fake.

No one wants to order an iPhone 8 online, only to get it and out it runs on an Android OS.

Be careful when buying stuff online and make sure to do proper background checks on all potential media outlets you want to patronises.

Voice scammers.
Everybody loves that random call from their grandparents or old time friends, well used to. These days random calls from unknown numbers usually mean a potential scammer and most times it’s very difficult to decipher who’s on the phone without sounding rude, but it’s 2019, no one gives AF.

For every unknown number that calls you, always make sure to have a full-on question session with them to be totally sure.

Bank scammers
We’re in the age where the banks are constantly sending messages to us for card maintenance, bank balance etc. Seeing this, some scammers send messages to random people telling them that the credit cards have been deactivated, asking them to send in their card details.

That’s where they get them……account wiped.

Fake news
Clickbait, news headlines like Buhari steps down as President. Anything to get you on their site and then they ask for your email, which isn’t a big deal…..till you start receiving spam emails offering you fake job opportunities and event invites.

Before clicking on news headlines like this, always try to do a quick google search.

Travel scams and unrealistic vacation opportunities
Everyone one wants to leave this sad excuse for a country, some more desperate than others and these are the usual victims. Lagos to Dubai 100k! What they won’t tell you is that the plane will land in Libya and you have to walk the rest of the way.

There’s a lot more than we probably do not know about, all we can say is be careful! And always double check and be very very observant!

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