The Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has arrested nearly 800 people nationwide in connection to crypto romance scams, the agency said.
EFCC Executive Chairman Ola Olukoyede recently announced that the regulator’s enforcement actions led to the arrest of 792 suspects allegedly involved in cryptocurrency investment fraud and romance scams.
The arrests took place on Tuesday as part of a sting operation in a purported crime den located in a seven-story building “which could be mistaken for a corporate headquarters of a financial establishment,” he said.
The suspects have not yet been charged and the EFCC has not yet said how much money it thinks the romance scam operation stole from victims.
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He went on to say that the building had been set up with “high-end desktop computers,” adding that agents recovered “500 SIM cards on the fifth floor alone.”
Many of the scammers working there had been assigned foreign phone numbers, mostly German and Italian, according to investigators.
“Their Nigerian accomplices were recruited by the foreign kingpins to prospect for victims online through phishing, targeting mostly Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, and several others from European countries,” Olukoyede said in the press release.
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Workers at the fraud operation were given computers and cell phones, then put through “a two-week induction on how to impersonate foreign females in romance scam chats and convince victims to invest in their employers' cryptocurrency investment scam.”
But once the Nigerian workers were able to get a victim on the hook, the foreign administrators of the operation would take over in the final stages of the scams and “block their Nigerian accomplices from the network.”
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Many of the people arrested were foreigners in the country. Among them 148 are Chinese nationals, 40 Filipinos, two Kharzartans, one Pakistani and one Indonesian. The foreign nationals were reportedly involved in the training of Nigerians on how to initiate romance and investment scams.
“Foreigners are taking advantage of our nation's unfortunate reputation as a haven of frauds to establish a foothold here to disguise their atrocious criminal enterprises,” Olukoyede said. “But, as this operation has shown, there will be no hiding places for criminals in Nigeria.”
The announcement follows a similar report coming from Asia. In mid-October Hong Kong police dismantled a deepfake romance scam that defrauded individuals of approximately $46 million through fraudulent cryptocurrency investments.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
