In May 2021, it was reported that a 21-year-old Dominic Ngene Joshua defrauded some investors over N2B using investment platforms. He asked his victims to invest in his companies, promising them that they would become shareholders in the company and get monthly returns on their investments.
We are still on the Chinmark case, the CEO Marksman Chinedu Ijeoma who is on the news to have (allegedly) defrauded his investors billions of Naira and he is still going about his daily business and now the recent (alleged) con-artist making the new who is (alleged) to have defrauded her investors over N500m is a 28 years old Imu Ovaioza Yunusa, who claimed to be an agricultural produce distributor.
Safe to say that if you want to get rich overnight in Nigeria don’t waste your time doing rituals or yahoo-yahoo or going into politics; just come up with an investment scheme and make up a “too good to be true” unrealistic return on investment/ profit margin for the prospective investors. Then, hire influencers to advertise and influence the investment platform for you.
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Make sure you have an innocent look, appear to be rich, show off fake documents and wealth (after all nobody will verify or bother to check their authenticity), and sprinkle it with a dose of religion. Make sure you go around with cameramen to take quality pictures and videos for you to post on social media for your followers and prospective prey to see that you are doing well.
If you follow this process, believe me, that you are on your way to becoming an overnight billionaire; your prospective investors will gladly give you all their money without asking questions.
Marksman Chinedu played this game very well. He showed he is rich, always showing off unverified wealth on Facebook, then he added that he’s an empathic man and a philanthropist to his resume; he is always doing giveaways; he will always stop his convoy to give a random hawker on the street some bundles of cash.
He also showed he’s a religious man and a born-again believer too; he is always posting himself in church, praying, or in some religious gathering, then he came up with the (killer cliche) “all we have God gave us”. This swayed Nigerians into sending him their hard-earned money without verifying the genuineness of his person or his investment platforms.
Oviazo also played this game quite well too; she showed to be a philanthropist that runs a skill acquisition NGO, then she proved to know a lot about Agricultural products, then she was able to gather many followers on Facebook; although she didn’t add religion to her antics but she did add some sprinkle of emotional manipulations.
As for the 21 years old Joshua Ngene; his antics and mode of operation will be a story for another day because I just can’t make sense of it. Some of his victims claimed that they had no idea what they were doing when they were investing in his investment scheme, that it seems they were under some spells or some unexplainable spiritual influence.
Why people fall prey to these cheap frauds eludes my imagination. You fall for a cheap scam cooked up by a 21 years old who is still in secondary school learning in geography that “the earth is shaped like a ball”.
It’s all greed and “make money quick” syndrome that makes people fall prey.
Many Nigerians are gullible, greedy, and quick to believe everything and trust anyone. Quick to be carried away by what they see especially on social media platforms, quick to be swayed by social and peer pressure. The FOMO syndrome is a huge sickness in Nigeria and this is what these uneducated and backyard local fraudsters prey on.
“confido sed cognoscere” ( trust but verify). This popular statement is not for Nigerians. They trust blindly and are too lazy to verify or make some underground checks because if they do verify, some of the victims of this fraud wouldn’t have been a victim at all.
I know in counseling and therapy, blaming the victim is not permitted but it should be said that in this regard the victims always play a huge role in them getting defrauded and that should be pointed out.
If you really work hard for your money then you should verify, and carry out due diligence inquiry before you invest your millions of Naira into any investment scheme.
In Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, I understand that man is an emotional animal. We always make emotional decisions then later try to rationalize. To make rational decisions, we must allow our prefrontal cortex to override our low road neural circuitry.
This fraudulent investment scheme won’t stop as long as tabularasa minds are born everyday and many don’t care to learn about the rules of making money.
Your article is short and valuable. Well done.