Wazobia Investment is another Ponzi scheme that has stolen millions of Naira from Nigerians online. Many people who lost money to the scheme have been cursing online.
We cannot ascertain how much has been lost to the scam, however, people with the knowledge of the scheme said more than N100 million must have been stolen by the criminals behind the scheme.
Wazobia Investment claimed it is a funding network, however it a Ponzi Scheme because of its operation. The scammers promised investment their investors 50% profit on their investment. ‘The first investment gets this 50% after 3 days, and any other investment after that takes 7 days to become ripe’.
Wazobia investment said it allows investors to withdraw both the invested amount and their profit at once. It also claimed its investors will get “50% profit on your first investment, however, this is a lie going by its victims who have written complaints to us. An investor wrote in an online forum that “This is because the system does not allow you to withdraw your ripe investment when due until you reinvest. Now, you investment can be anything from N10,000 to N1,000,000. You are also not allowed to make re-commitments lower than what you invested before. That is, if you invest 10,000 at start, the least amount of re-commitment is 10,000,” a victim said.
The problem finally surfaced last week, the criminals stopped paying new investors. This is confirmed by an angry investor who said:
“Wazobia na scam, I placed withrawal since 3 weeks ago and I am still placed on queue waiting to be assigned payer. I am not the only one, three of my friends have the same problem and I don’t advice anyone to invest in wazobia investment since they are not safe and can disappoint you anytime.”
The scam was apparently using the MMM Ponzi scheme model. One of the victims who has been being scammed said:
“Wazobia is a big scam and God will punish anybody that eat my money all of them that are involved in this platform will die before this year runs out.God never spare the wicked one way or the other as u are investing people money on ur business ur business will vanish within a twinkle of an eye,if u all used our money to eat and feed ur family they will die when eating people sweat.if u used our money to buy car u all will die in car accident,if u all used our money to enter t.fare as u highlight from d bus another bus will send u all to your grave.if u give the money to ur love one they will have one problem that even what u stole from us wont solve.anything u all do with our money before this post u have meet ur death until u return all the money before your life can be normal.u have the chance to be forgiving but if u think u are wise try God and see.may God punish ur generation until u return all u have stolen from us.”
“Wazobia is a very big scam,for the past 3weeks now me and my friends have not been merged,they said they ar doing upgrading,but yesterday 12-7-2020,i decided to reinvest,again and i pledge #30000,but 24hrs they have merge me with a user who called me on the 13th and said i should pay her,i just told her abt my ordeal and that of my friends,and i told her that she has been scam by wazobia nonsense,that after collecting your facial advert,the now put you as an old use,and chose not to pay or merge you…SCAMMERS,” said an angry investor.
It is not a new thing for people to float Ponzi schemes to take advantage of online users. However, it is disturbing that such schemes keeps coming back to steal more money from people.
The advice is to always be careful, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”.
