One of the noticeable features of complaints received from investors over time is that many have fallen victim of what can be described as ‘one-chance investment’. For the benefit of those not familiar with the term one-chance, it is a term created by commercial busses in Lagos. For example, when 13 passengers have boarded a 14 seater  commercial bus, the bus conductor, in a bid to attract the last passenger will began to shout, “ Oshodi, Oshodi, one-chance”.
Meaning it remains just one more seat to be occupied. If you are in a hurry, you would quickly jump in, so as to save time. But later on, fraudsters using commercial buses to operate began to use the term. The fraudsters would occupy 13 spaces, using the last space (one-chance) as bait. Once the unsuspected passenger hops in, the fraudster-filled bus takes off, and somewhere in the middle of the journey, the unlucky passenger is robbed. Hence the term, one-chance became synonymous with fraud in Nigeria.
There are also one-chance investments, and many have fallen victim, not only in the capital market, but also in the financial sector generally. One-chance investment is an investment where the investor is dealing with and depends on just one person for investment transactions. One-chance investment comes in various forms and shades, but it is the deliberately ignorant investor that usually falls victim.
The commonest type is the one perpetrated by fraudulent staff of companies floating shares or an investment scheme. Recall that during the boom in the capital market, there were deluge of share offerings and investment schemes. Most times, the companies behind these offers send out staff to market the offers, or sometimes contract other companies as agents to market the offers.
So, the staff of either the company selling shares or its agents go out, (to traders, artisans e.t.c) encouraging them to invest. What some people erroneously did is that they just give the money to the staff, complete the offer application forms and go to sleep or just rely on the staff for update on their investment.  But some of the marketing staff with fraudulent mindset, once they are sure that the investor is so ignorant and rely on them for updates, they just pocket the cash, and give the investor falsified documents as evidence of investment.
Sometimes, an individual with some knowledge of the market sets up a company, not a stockbroking company, but an investment advisory company. There operation is to offer assistance to individuals vis-à-vis buying and selling shares. They don’t go to the educated and enlightened individuals, but the un-enlighten people. They convince them about the benefits of shares and promise to assist them with respect to the processes and procedures.
So, these people hand over their money and rely on the investment adviser for updates. There are many cases of these investment advisers playing games with the investors’ money and eventually bolting away.  Another type of one-chance investment is perpetrated by fraudulent staff of stockbroking firms. They encourage the investor to give them the cash, or the investor in an attempt to escape the inconvenience of going to the bank to pay into the account of the firm, prefers to hand-over the cash to the staff of the stockbroking firm.
In a lot of cases, the staff uses the cash to help themselves and generate reasons for the investor why the shares have not been bought. And many have fallen victims and most of the victims are resident outside the major cities.  How do you avoid falling victim of one-chance investment?  Or if you have fallen victim, or you think you have made a one-chance investment, what can you do?



http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/10/beware-one-chance-investment/