Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has uncovered a massive online fraud operation, arresting 792 people—including foreign nationals—accused of running cryptocurrency and romance scams. The arrests were made on December 10 in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, at a building known as “Big Leaf,” where the scammers were allegedly operating.
The suspects include 148 Chinese nationals, 40 Filipinos, two individuals from Kazakhstan, one Pakistani, and one Indonesian. According to EFCC spokesperson Wilson Uwujaren, these foreign individuals trained Nigerian accomplices to lure victims online. They posed as romantic interests, building trust before tricking victims into investing in fake cryptocurrency schemes.
The group’s primary targets were people in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. Once the Nigerian recruits gained the victims’ trust on social media platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram, the foreign masterminds would step in to complete the scam.
The EFCC seized hundreds of items, including laptops, mobile phones, desktop computers, vehicles, and over 500 local SIM cards. Investigators believe the group used these tools to carry out phishing schemes and impersonate victims online.
Uwujaren explained that the foreign scammers deliberately took advantage of Nigeria’s reputation as a hotspot for online fraud, using it as cover to run their global operations. “These foreign kingpins recruited Nigerians to prospect for victims, while they handled the actual defrauding,” Uwujaren said.
The EFCC is now working with international partners to uncover the full scope of this operation, including any links to larger global fraud networks.
Online Fraud in Nigeria
This isn’t the first time Nigeria has been in the spotlight for online scams. In April, a University of Oxford study ranked Nigeria fifth in the world for cybercrime activity. Social media platforms have also been cracking down. In July, Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) removed over 63,000 Instagram accounts linked to financial sextortion scams originating in Nigeria, along with thousands of other Facebook pages and groups sharing fraud tips.
Despite these challenges, the EFCC continues to tackle fraud, aiming to change Nigeria’s global reputation and protect unsuspecting victims around the world.
This latest bust is one of the largest of its kind and serves as a warning to those involved in online scams: the net is closing in.
