By: Chukwudi Iwuchukwu
1.3 trillion can comfortably start an airline business in Nigeria.
It can build a modular refinery.
It can also start a bank with a national spread and with a robust balance sheet.
It can also buy an existing bank, whether First Bank or Fidelity Bank, through a forceful hostile takeover.
This is the amount retail investors invested in a Ponzi business. CBEX
Ponzi business is as old as time.
It did not start today.
Nigerians have had a long and painful history with Ponzi schemes.
Our parents were victims.
From early “wonder banks” in the 1980s and 1990s like Umana-Umana, Planwell, and Nospecto to the devastating MMM collapse of 2016-2017 that affected over three million Nigerians, these fraudulent schemes have consistently exploited economic vulnerabilities.
By 2022, the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) estimated that Nigerians lost ₦911.45 billion to Ponzi schemes over 23 years, with ₦300 billion lost in just the five years following MMM’s collapse. Other notable schemes that defrauded Nigerians include Twinkas, Ultimate Cycler, Get Help Worldwide, Loom, Racksterli, Chinmark, Ovioza, and MBA Forex, which swindled investors of ₦230 billion between 2018 and 2021.
It does not make sense that younger people who are meant to be smarter and more exposed are falling victim again to Ponzi scams.
My heart and thoughts go out to the victims who lost their money to these savvy criminals.
May the lessons of this painful experience not be lost on you, which is:
Any investment that offers 100% returns on investment is fake and a red flag.
Don’t fall for it.
As the full impact of CBEX’s collapse continues to unfold, it serves as a painful reminder of the adage that has proven true in financial markets: if something seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
In the pictures attached are CBEX investors In Abuja waiting patiently to hear the next update about their investment with the Ponzi scheme.
