As Nigeria transits into a cashless society, the evolution also creates opportunities for internet fraudsters to take advantage of unsuspecting citizens. Abdulrasheed HAMMAD reports about how Nigerians are getting fleeced of their hard-earned money by internet crooks.
Victims of internet fraud recount experience

A victim of online fraud, Eziri Tina, an indigene of Delta state, narrated how she met one Orave Olufu, a member of a scam syndicate on Facebook. Orave describes herself as a cloth seller on Facebook and Tina asked to be introduced to her supplier. She was later introduced to Efe Mercy Morrison, the alleged fraudster who lies to her victims on Facebook that she imports clothes from China.

After a long negotiation, Morrison showed her victims the pictures of the goods that would be supplied to her and requested payment in the sum of N57, 500. Immediately, Tina transferred the money into a Keystone Bank account – 6030589177 bearing the name: Efe Mercy. A few minutes later she was blocked.

When she reported the scam to Keystone bank, they asked for the account details of the swindler. She also reported the fraud to her bank and the staff who attended to her promised they would do their best to recover her money.

This happened on 21 July and as of the time of filing this report, Tina is yet to recover her money.

Busola Saa’dudeen is another victim of an online scam. She narrated how her friend on Facebook, Olaitan Adebesin introduced an investment program to her.

According to Saa’dudeen, she was constantly persuaded by her friend to invest and receive double the amounts invested within two days.

“Two days after I sent the sum of N10,000 to them, which is the day I was supposed to be credited the double amount as promised. I talked to the person and she told me they have a problem with their network. Not long after that, they stopped responding to all my messages,” she lamented. The Trucllaer showed her name as Victoria Investment.

It was later she discovered that her friend’s Facebook account had been hacked. When asked why she didn’t inform the police, she told The ICIR that her friend informed her that the police would not do anything to it, rather they would fleece her.

The stories of Tina and Saa’dudeen illustrate the travail of victims of online scam in Nigeria, and the frustration they experience in the quest to seek redress.

Online scam in Nigeria is now rampant as more youths engage in swindling others as a means of survival.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US recently indicted 80 suspects, 77 of them Nigerians – in what it describes as the “largest case of online fraud in US history.”
Also, last year, Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) along with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) arrested 281 individuals for cyber-enabled financial fraud, among who 167 were Nigerians.
The estimated annual financial loss in Nigeria due to cybercrime was N250 billion ($649 million) in 2017 and N288 billion ($800 million) in 2018, yet 95 percent of cybercrimes go unreported
Another victim, Oladipupo Success narrated how her friend’s WhatsApp number was hacked and used to defraud her. They are in the same WhatsApp group for Christian fellowship. The victim, a 200-Level student of Anatomy at the University of Ilorin, didn’t know her friend physically, but she knows she is a member of her church.

According to her, the WhatsApp contact of a friend named Blessing was hacked and they used the contact to send an advertisement on Helping Hand Investment and after she joined their WhatsApp group, she received their call instantly.

“He said I should send my account details that he is going to send the account details of the account that I will be sending the money to. He promised me that after five minutes, I will be getting the alert, ‘just like that’,”

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/investigation-how-online-fraudsters-feed-on-greed-naivety-of-victims-in-nigeria/