Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has launched a manhunt for four Kenyans suspected of involvement in an incident in which users lost money on a popular cryptocurrency and forex trading platform known as Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX).
The watchdog published a list of eight wanted persons, including the Kenyans, in connection with a breach on the CBEX platform which saw the accounts of sections of users in Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt wiped out about two weeks ago.
The four Kenyans under the watchdog’s radar are John Okiroh Otieno, Israel Mbaluka, Joseph Michiro Kabera, and Serah Michiro, all of whom have been living in Lagos, Nigeria.
The Nigerians are Seyi Oloyede, Emmanuel Uko, Adefowora Oluwanisola, and Adefowora Abiodun Olaonipekun.
“The public is hereby notified that the persons whose photographs appear above are suspected foreign accomplices wanted by the EFCC for fraud allegedly perpetrated on an online trading platform called Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX),” said the watchdog in a public notice published Friday.
CBEX had lured many Africans with the promise of AI-powered returns, lucrative referral bonuses, and easy withdrawals. The promoters claimed the platform would offer returns of up to 30 percent in just 30 days.
Many investors trusted it and put their money in it expecting high returns, only to wake up one morning and find their accounts empty, unable to withdraw the funds held in their digital wallets.
The firm failed to honour customer withdrawal requests and abruptly closed its physical office in Nigeria as more people complained of the sudden collapse of withdrawals.
Preliminary investigations by Nigerian authorities have revealed that CBEX was never registered nor granted a license to operate a digital asset exchange in Nigeria or in any other jurisdiction in Africa.
It “engaged in promotional activities to create a false perception of legitimacy, in order to entice unsuspecting members of the public into investing monies, with the promise of implausibly high guaranteed returns within a short timeframe,” Nigeria’s Securities Exchange Commission found.
EFCC says it has engaged Interpol and the Federal Bureau of Investigations to track down the suspected promoters of the scheme and bring them to justice.
It is not clear how much was lost from the platform in total or how much Kenyans specifically lost.
Meanwhile, Kenyan authorities are yet to commence any investigations into the platform or make any public comments regarding the loss of funds recorded from the collapsed platform.
