 Welcome back. After the news of Inyobong Moran's killing became public on Sunday, different people started sending tweets of missing persons across Nigeria. One of the supposedly missing persons is a lady called Munachim Chukumahonya. And after, of course, news of her also being declared missing broke, people started wondering if she is truly missing or if she decided to go missing after defrauding people to the tune of 1.1 billion Naira. It was also around the same time that a protest against Maxwell or Dooms, MBA, trade union and capital investment was reported. A security expert and founder of Chive GPS Namdi Chive is joining us from Abuja this morning. Thank you so much Mr. Chive for stepping in. Good morning. Thank you. Yeah, good morning. Thanks for having me. Great to have you. We, of course, are once again having a conversation on funds of people Nigerians being defrauded. It's not been too long ago we had of MMM and how that ended. But it doesn't seem like a lot of Nigerians are shying away or moving away from these investment plans and these money-doubling schemes. So let's start with why you think it continues to drive in the Nigerian space. Okay, so what we have playing out in the past one or two years is the old-time money scheme, which we refer as Ponzi, whereby you take money from party A and you also take from party B. But you also take, use the same resources from party B to settle the obligations of party A. So MMM was so successful. They were not selling any products. They built it around community assistance. So by the time MMM went down, they are taking over unquantified billions. You can't place a figure right now on what MMM took from Nigerians. So a lot of people saw MMM as, began to mirror the structure and the means that which we MMM used to fleece Nigerians of billions. For instance, after MMM collapsed, there were similar schemes that came along. But after that, some Nigerians who are in the agriculture sector and also felt that they needed to democratize the access to agriculture. So somebody set up a website and began to mobilize resources from Nigerians in exchange for profit. And people invested in them and got some returns. But several others saw it as a way to come into that sector, be it in the foreign exchange sector, trading online, be it in the cryptocurrency sector trading. So what they promised is usually outrageous in terms of what they are supposed to pay as a return. It goes from 25% to 75%. And I blame Nigerians a lot for it, but I also blame the regulatory authorities for not coming in to stop these people at the early stage. I used to be a former banker and I left banking in 2017 to set up GPS because while I was in the bank, a lot of fraudsters walking to the banking house present you fraudulent documents to assess facilities. So when you're also doing a background check on this one to give facility, it's called that their ways are not clean. So Nigerians had no means to verify the identities of some of these people behind these fraudulent schemes. Somebody set up a website take pictures, say in the agricultural department now. Some people go to farms, maybe your Basantia farms, take some pictures, put on their website that this is their farm, you know, plantain, poultry, cassava, and they tell you, put money into it, six months, 12 months, they are going to pay it 25% at 5%. And the economy is in a terrible shape. The treasury bid I used to offer 80%, 90% is no longer doing that anymore, is offering around 2% or 1%. So Nigerians are looking for ways and means to turn around their resources in a shorter time. So this agriculture or Ponzi scheme advocates, you know, take advantage of that. So when they set up this scheme, you put your money in the first six months, they pay you between 5% and you are like, oh, this works. And you go about telling others to come and invest. So the second journey of that investment is what is always likely to end in disaster. A lot of Nigerians who are putting their money into it. So it's really the interest payment that is drawing Nigerians that they forgot to, you know, carry about granted on some of these persons running these scams. All right. Now that we know, you know, this particular issue, you know, my colleague asked, how do we basically, you know, know these things? And you mentioned, or rather, why are Nigerians drawn to these Ponzi schemes? And you say high interest rates. You also mentioned that Nigerians have no way to verify these schemes. So from your experience as, you know, a business intelligence expert and in the banking industry, what are the markings of a fraudulent scheme? When somebody goes to a farm, like you mentioned, takes pictures, has a beautiful website, everything looks great. How can I, as an ordinary Nigerian, just be able to decipher that this is a scam, this is a fraudulent investment? What are the markings of a fraudulent investment scheme? Okay. Good. Now, this has to do with financial analysis and also physical verification. Now, if I come to the financial analysis, a lot of Nigerians don't have that skill to be able to analyze sectorial investments or, you know, for instance, if somebody's offering you 10% on agricultural investments, and have you been able to make the analysis to determine if this investment is valid? Let's take for instance, if somebody is investing in rice, what if the person is offering you say 25% because these are what these people are offering 25%. So what is the risk in rice investment? There could be instances of fraud. Have you put your money there? What is the guarantee that if there's a fraud, that this investment, they are going to get the money back? Now, they tell you there's an insurance because they paste insurance companies on their website. Have you interrogated the insurance placed on this rice investment? They said the insurance covers the firm, but is it on your capital or on your firm? So you have to ask the questions. If I'm giving you 5 million, and you're giving me 25%, what happens in the event that this firm has issued? How do I get my money back? If you put your money in the backing sector, you go home and sleep because anything that happens, we can't go that CBN has been intervening since 2009 to safeguard the safety of funds in the bank, that if the money bank collapses, CBN comes in and intervenes. Or even if CBN doesn't come in to intervene, you have the national and deposit insurance corporation that can pay you back your funds. So in the case of these schemes, they claim they have insurance, but Nigerians fail to interrogate that particular insurance because the insurance covers my invested capital or is it just the firm? If it covers your investment capital, they should be able to give you the number of that insurance so that you can go to the insurance company and find out if this thing covers my capital in the event of loss. Now, when you come to physical verification of firms, you don't need to esteem. There are some people that they don't know these people from anywhere. They just see them on Instagram and they just transfer 10 million without any attire of a check. And now when it comes to us to now start tracking these people or to start looking for the identities of these persons, I am asking them to provide the logistics or the funds to be able to enable you, implore people to the field to look for them. And they start telling you they don't have money or they start asking you that I want to help them. What is your track record? So Nigerians don't carry out any grand check in terms of the identity of these persons. What about insurance? In 5% that they are offering you, have you made the analysis within the sector to see if- Namdi, let me just ask. I think you're making strong points there. But for a lot of Nigerians who are not educated enough or not financially intelligent enough to go through all these checks to find out some of the things that you've mentioned, what are the most basic red flags that can be pointed out to anybody who tells me that there's some investment plan that will give me 25 or 30% if I put a million attire? Now, the red flag should be the interest rates that they are offering because within the investment space there's no current product or services that can give you even 10% in Nigeria today because the economic space is so restricted that people hardly make margins on their investment. So my advice to Nigerians is if you don't know- if you have a million, if you have 500, even 500,000, you don't really know how to- you don't have a means to on your own independently confirm the identity of this person because character matters. When I was in the banking sector, before we give you a credit, we have to investigate your character. Your character is even more important to me than your capacity to pay in terms of your collateral. So you need to look at the- there is a public intelligence out there. Some people that defrauded persons in the past are- their information is out there in the public. So you can check online for the character or the past history of these persons. If your history is dodgy, don't put your money there. If you cannot make the analysis of the investment within the sector to see if that in 5% is possible, kindly call up an expert. If you want- if you want to put one million to- to give to somebody that you don't know because it's only on phone call and on Instagram that you met this person, what does it cost you to, you know, pay an expert? It's not a treasure, some of money, you can pay an accountant a little token or a friend call up a friend within the investment space to tell you there are a lot of persons on Instagram and on Twitter who are investment analysts and who are also each time they give out these investment tips. You can- you can send them a DM, you can call up them to say, can you help me to make analysis of this investment? Okay, so- All right, so Nnamdi, let's say for example, somebody tells me about an investment and I see that the returns are very high. So I suspect that maybe I check online and I see that this may be a scam, you know, sites like MyraLand, you know, enable people speak openly about things like this, you know, and one tip I need to share that I've used, you know, when you're suspecting something like that, put the name of the business, put the word and in capital letter and scam in small letters. So if that business name and the word scam appears, you know, in the same sentence within any online database it'll come up. So moving on from there, if you find that or you have an idea or an inkling that this might be a scam, what should that person do, report to the police? Is there anything that they can do to prevent other people from falling into that scam or to, you know, expedite investigation into it? What advice Nigerians to do and what we intend to do as a- they could out within the background check space is to once you carry out any background check on these people and or if any Nigerian has carried a background check on them, is to write the regulatory authority like the CEC. CEC, CBN, and some other authorities have the sole authority to license people to come into the public space to mobilize funds from people and pay out interest. If you are not licensed by CEC, as an asset management company or as an investment company, you know, you don't have any business invested in collecting money from people. So it's fraudulent and those persons should be reported to CEC and you can post it online at least people do not have the requisite investment licenses to trade. Finally, if you can do this in 30 seconds because we need to wrap up, I want to know if there's any hope for those people who have called out Mona Chim and the other guy Maxwell O'Doom. Is there any hope that these people will get their monies back? What I tell these persons to do is to- there's a hope that they will get their money back but they need to- not to rely on the government, the government infrastructure to help them to get this money back. They need to engage a serious legal attorneys or similar companies that can facilitate the process of going after these persons because they mobilize a lot of money from Nigerians. They need- the way they crowdfunded money to these companies, they need to crowdfund resources within themselves, no matter how little, engage an expert to start going after these people on their behalf anywhere they might be, whether in Nigeria or outside of the country, they can do it and they'll get their money back. All right, thank you very much. So basically you're saying if you detect that a company is forced, is always a scam, you can report to the security and exchange commission. I hope we can be able to do that online, right? Exactly, exactly. They have their Twitter handles online and you can also write the EFCC as well to flag these people as an unauthorized company. Okay, all right and Nigerians also need to be very watchful, you know, of schemes that promise you very high returns in a very short time. So thank you very much for all the business advice, Ms Nnamdi Chiefay. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All right, so just to repeat what I said really, I find that this works all the time. You need to ask questions. I speak to young people and they say, oh I put my money in an investment and you ask what's the name of this investment. It's one name that you've never heard of, no track record or you put the name of the business, let's say it's XYZ limited, XYZ limited in small letters, the word and in capital letter A and in capital letter then maybe scam. If anybody online has had a, you know, a bad experience of them, you know, you would find it online, especially on platforms like Maryland I can mention earlier. So we do need to exercise that due diligence and not just rush into things because you know, I want to invest, I want to invest. I know lots of investments that people have lost money. They would tell you, you know, they went to the company to protest. Some people even stole computers and you know, equipment from the company but that would never give you your money back. You're not a retailer, where would you even sell that? So that's not even, you know, part of the question. So we should be very, very watchful. Like I mentioned yesterday, even when financial experts give you financial advice, they would tell you to consult and not just, you know, jump and plunge right into it. And I know you didn't stop, you know, hoping on money doublers. Those things only happen. Yes, I'm telling you. And in regards to this case of Mona Chim, I really hope she's, she's safe because I really, really hope she disappeared because of this money. And I say that because the spirit of kidnapping these days is just alarming, you know. So if she's safe, she decided to disappear. Thank God she is actually safe that we can now concentrate on finding her and getting the money back. But if it's a case where someone has kidnapped for bad reasons, I mean, that would just be terrible. And it really makes me ask, why will the parents and siblings wait until 10 days before the sound of the alarm that she's missing? So it really is suspicious. You'll think she can, she has enough money to pay background to me. That's a joke. Anyway, stay with us. Oh my God. We'll be back. And of course, we're going to be talking to the INEC commissioner next. Stay with us.