Thousands of Nigerians on Monday lost their savings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to a cryptocurrency investment platform called CBEX, leading to widespread panic on social media and massive looting at their Ibadan office.
The Ponzi scheme, cloaked as a digital trading investment platform, claimed to double the deposit balance of investors within 40 days.
CBEX operators promised Nigerians and other participating Africans that AI technology would trade only one per cent of their balance twice daily to mitigate the risk of losing all funds.
With a compound interest system, the money would aggregate to double the initial balance by the fortieth day of deposit.
Investors were asked to refer new people to increase their trading signals by 12 per cent.
The scheme, which began operations in Nigeria in 2023, soon gained over 15,000 investors, with many users posting pictures of vehicles, tricycles, motorcycles, sewing machines and other assets bought with CBEX funds.
CBEX withdrawals were usually forwarded to a Bybit account, where the USDT would be converted to fiat currency (naira).
On Friday, users began to panic after CBEX gave them bonuses that could not be withdrawn.
The scheme operators told users to complete their trading volume by generating the same amount of USDT they were given through daily trades.
The sudden pause in withdrawals caused rumours to swirl that the scheme had crashed, but operators issued statements assuring investors that their funds were safe and that withdrawals would resume on Tuesday (today).
On Monday afternoon, the so-called AI, which usually traded one per cent of deposits, traded 100 per cent, and users immediately notified the CBEX ST management.
For the second trading signal on Monday, AI traded 100 per cent of investors’ funds, resulting in a total loss of funds. Some users lost over $100,000, while some lost as low as $300.
The Telegram group was locked to prevent users from lamenting their losses but CBEX operators blamed the loss on hackers, alleging their security systems were breached.
The ST management promised to compensate users for their losses, but that they must pay between $100 and $200 for verification to get back their funds.
Users with less than a $1,000 balance were asked to send $100, while those above $1,000 were asked to send $200 to recover their funds.
The operators gave investors a three-day window between April 14 and 17 to make payment or risk losing all their funds.
The Telegram was again open for a few hours to allow users to send only pictures (screenshots of the $100 and $200 deposits.)
Messages were not allowed in the group.
