The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has warned members of the public against falling victim of a new fraudulent promo scam.
A press statement by the Commission’s Head Media and Publicity, Dele Oyewale, Friday in Abuja, stated that: “The EFCC views with great concern a rising fraudulent scheme newly perfected by fraudsters to defraud Nigerians of their hard-earned money and considers it imperative to alert Nigerians to be wary of ubiquitous foreign airlines’ ticketing discount promos.
“The scheme involves the use of malware to gain unauthorized access to the account information of unsuspecting victims.
“Teasers like ‘Promo’, ‘Investment Windows’ and other baits, are usually employed to make their victims volunteer their account information through which fraudsters execute transactions on their behalf by sending their funds to accounts mainly in Fintech Institutions.
“Through this access, fraudsters then control and launder the funds through purchase of crypto currencies.
“A case in point was a ‘Promo’ offering the public 50% discount of ticket purchase in a leading foreign airline.
“Victims are led to pay a token of N500 into the account of the airline.
“The N500 payment which is now dressed as Charity payment is the leeway through which the fraudsters gain access to their victim’s personal information.
“The victims were deceived into downloading the App of the airline to be eligible for the discount.
“However, after downloading the App and gaining unauthorized access to their personal details, funds were moved from the victim’s bank account into an account in a Microfinance Bank.”
Oyewale further added that, “it is important to disclose that this fraud scheme is largely driven by an army of young Nigerians offering a paltry payment of between N1,500 and N2,000 to their victims to make them surrender a copy of their personal information details to them and sell the same information to some Fintech Institutions for about N5,000.
“These canvassers called themselves ‘Account Suppliers’ or ‘KYC Group”.
