#CryptoUsersHit18M
Nearly 800 suspects arrested in Nigeria over crypto-romance scheme
LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria’s anti-bribery agency said it had arrested 792 suspects in a raid on a building believed to be a hub for fraudsters who lured victims with offers of romance and then pressured them to hand over cash for bogus cryptocurrency investments.
The suspects, including 148 Chinese and 40 Filipinos, were arrested on Dec. 10 at the seven-story Big Leaf Building in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission spokesman Wilson Uwujaren said.
The luxury building housed a call center catering mainly to victims from the Americas and Europe, he added.
The site’s employees would reach out to people through social media and messaging platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram, luring them online or offering them seemingly lucrative investment opportunities, Uwujaren told reporters. Once the victims were hooked, they were pressured to wire money to fake cryptocurrency schemes and other non-existent projects. “Nigerian accomplices were recruited by the foreign kingpins to seek out victims online through ‘phishing’, targeting mainly Americans, Canadians, Mexicans and several others from European countries,” Uwujaren said. “Once the Nigerians managed to gain the trust of the potential victims, the foreigners would take over the actual task of defrauding the victims,” he said. Uwujaren said the commission was working with international partners and would look into possible links to organized crime. Its agents seized computers, phones and vehicles during the raid, he added. (Reporting by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Editing by:
