Latest news with #PonziScheme
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
Man convicted in 'complex' fraud case where $8.4M was conned from elderly victim
A Montgomery man has been convicted of numerous fraud charges in connection with a "complex." scheme to defraud an elderly victim of $8.4 million, the state's top cop says. A Montgomery County jury found James 'Jimmy' Bulger guilty on three felony charges: first-degree theft by deception, aggravated theft by deception and first-degree financial exploitation of the elderly, said Attorney General Steve Marshall. Following a six-day trial, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all charges, concluding that Bulger stole $8.4 million from an elderly victim over the course of more than two years through a complex Ponzi scheme, the attorney general said. More: Mayor promises 'justice' after 13-year-old girl dies in overnight Montgomery shooting 'This wasn't a lapse in judgment, it was a calculated, predatory scheme that stole nearly $9 million from an elderly man who trusted him,' said Marshall. 'James Bulger saw vulnerability and exploited it for personal gain, living lavishly while destroying his victim's financial future. His conviction is a powerful reminder that we will not hesitate to hold con artists and manipulators accountable, especially when they target our seniors.' Bulger manipulated the victim's advanced age and trust, convincing him to reinvest what he believed were profits — when in fact he was simply receiving his own funds, Marshall said. Bulger used the stolen money to fund an extravagant lifestyle, purchasing luxury vehicles, designer goods, and constructing an 8,000-square-foot mansion. Following his indictment for the charges on which he was found guilty, Bulger tried to entice the victim to drop the criminal case in exchange for $1 million, Marshall's office said in a release. Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Marty Roney at mroney@ To support his work, please subscribe to the Montgomery Advertiser. This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Montgomery man convicted in fraud case involving elderly victim
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Real life 'Wolf Of Wall Street' corrupt City boss who remains on the run is ordered to pay back £64million after Ponzi-style scam
A City boss compared to the Wolf Of Wall Street has been ordered to pay back £64million over his role in a gigantic Ponzi-style investment scam, prosecutors said. Anthony Constantinou remains on the run after he fled the UK during his trial at London 's Southwark Crown Court in June 2023. He was found guilty of seven counts of fraud by false representation, fraudulent training and money laundering and convicted in his absence to 14 years imprisonment. Constantinou enjoyed a playboy lifestyle, driving a fleet of flash motors and riding around on a superbike branded the logo of his company, Capital World Markets (CWM). The 41-year-old crook spent millions on sponsorship deals designed to make CWM appear successful and draw in potential clients. He duped hundreds of investors out of a total of £70million between 2013 and 2015 while he ran Capital World Markets (CWM). A spokesman for City of London Police said a confiscation order was made against him on Thursday for the sum of £64 million, which is payable within three months. Police released photographs of some of the luxury vehicles Constantinou spent his fraudulent money on, including a Porsche, Range Rover and luxury motorbike. They previously said he was thought to be in Turkey or Dubai after being stopped in Bulgaria with a fake Spanish passport. CWM had high-profile sponsorship deals with sports events or teams including the Honda Moto GP, Chelsea Football Club, Wigan Warriors rugby league club, Cyclone Boxing Promotions and the London Boat Show. The seven-week trial heard how Constantinou spent £2.5million of investors' money on his 'no expense spared' wedding on the Greek island of Santorini in September 2014, while his son's first birthday party a few days earlier cost more than £70,000. More than £470,000 was paid for private jet hire to fly him and his associates to Moto GP races across Europe as well as a return flight to Nice for a 150,000-euro five-day yacht cruise around the Mediterranean to Monaco. The firm paid £200,000 a quarter to rent 'plush' offices in the City's Heron Tower, while nearly £600,000 was spent on just six months' rent of his large home in Hampstead, north-west London, where his luxury cars were parked in the drive. Promised returns of 60 per cent each year on risk-free foreign exchange (FX) markets, a total of 312 investors trusted their money to CWM. Some were professionals but most were individuals who handed over their life savings or pension pots, with a large number of Gurkhas paying into the scheme, said prosecutor David Durose KC. Constantinou denied wrongdoing but was found guilty of one count of fraud, two counts of fraudulent trading and four counts of money laundering and sentenced to 14 years in prison in his absence. Adrian Foster, of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: 'This was a callous scam targeting members of the public. Many people lost their hard-earned money because of Constantinou's greed and false promises in this fake investment scheme. 'We continue to pursue the proceeds of crime robustly with the City of London Police, where we identify available assets to disrupt and deter large-scale frauds like this case. 'In the last five years, over £478million has been recovered from CPS obtained confiscation orders, ensuring that thousands of convicted criminals cannot profit from their offending. £95 million of that amount has been returned to victims of crime, by way of compensation.' Constantinou has been photographed socialising with Princess Beatrice and showing Princess Anne around his company premises after agreeing to sponsor the London Boat Show in 2015. Constantinou was previously jailed for a year at the Old Bailey in 2016 after being found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during after-work drinks. One of the victims described how the parties were just like the raucous scenes depicted in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as rogue New York trader Jordan Belfort. The court heard that in October 2014, Constantinou pushed a woman up against the frosted glass of the reception area and went on to grope and kissed her against her will. Then in February 2015, he assaulted another woman during drinks after a business meeting. During the meeting, Constantinou threw her mobile against a wall and told her: 'Don't answer phones in my meeting.' Constantinou was three years old when his fashion tycoon father Aristos was gunned down in his Bishop's Avenue mansion in 1985. The unsolved case was dubbed the 'Silver Bullet Murder' due to the six nickel-jacketed bullets that ended Aristos's rags-to-riches life. One of Constantinou's investors spoke to Mail Online in 2023 about his boss' appetite for bad behaviour. The man, who first met Constantinou in 2014, said: 'He put out this image of himself as being hyper successful and I think essentially that's what I fell for. 'Initially I had dismissed the whole thing as too good to be true but I saw so much evidence of it being genuine that I convinced myself that it was. I should have listened to my gut. 'I thought essentially if this is a scam he wouldn't have gone to this much effort. It was very elaborate and there were a lot of people involved. 'The clever thing he did was he did actually have a properly regulated FX business in London but he ran the Ponzi alongside it - that was quite clever. 'So seeing the office, his house, the chauffeur driven Rolls Royce he got around in and all these sponsorship deals - it did all look very genuine. 'If Chelsea are being sponsored by them and he's meeting showing Princess Anne and showing her round the office it feels legit.' After a few meetings with Constantinou and his CWM colleagues in 2014, it was agreed that the businessman would invest £140,000 and work with the company to set up a Dubai base. It was while working alongside Constantinou in his 'Wolf of Wall Street' style trading floor, that he saw how difficult, volatile and untrustworthy the fraudster could be. He continued: 'Every single business meeting - and I mean every single one - he would force everyone in the meeting to drink. 'It was always the same, Grey Goose vodka mixed with orange and cranberry juice and he'd force everyone to stay and get drunk. 'The drinking would start from 2pm in the afternoon and go on until 10 or 11 at night and it was every single meeting, every day. 'He was like a spoiled child king. Nobody could leave these sessions or he'd have a tantrum and lose his s***. 'A few hours in he'd be absolutely wasted, so he'd be doing stupid, weird stuff like throwing things across the office to annoy people or smashing doors. He was a pretty nasty piece of work.' According to the investor, opting out of Constantinou's demands wasn't a choice as his paranoid, controlling and spiteful nature leaked into the entourage of underlings he kept at his heels. He said: 'His entourage was Stalin-esque. He kept his circle close and everyone just did as he said for fear of reprisals. 'He was a moody child who would fly off the handle for basically any reason. You always had to tell him what he wanted to hear. 'He had a Telegram group where he sent good morning messages. He expected every single person to reply with either a thumbs up emoji or a muscle emoji - if you didn't, he would lose his s***. 'One of his assistants would then phone you up and say: 'Listen, you have to reply to him in the Telegram group, he's going mad and smashing stuff up in the office.'
The Independent
14 hours ago
- Business
- The Independent
Fraudulent City boss ordered to pay back £64 million
A City boss compared to the The Wolf Of Wall Street has been ordered to pay back £64 million over his role in a multi-million pound Ponzi-style investment scam, prosecutors said. Anthony Constantinou remains on the run after he fled the UK during his fraud trial at London's Southwark Crown Court in June 2023. Hundreds of investors were duped out of a total of £70 million between 2013 and 2015 while he ran Capital World Markets (CWM). A spokesman for City of London Police said a confiscation order was made against him on Thursday for the sum of £64 million, which is payable within three months. The default period of imprisonment was set at 14 years. Police released photographs of some of the luxury vehicles Constantinou spent his fraudulent money on, including a Porsche, Range Rover and luxury motorbike. They previously said he was thought to be in Turkey or Dubai after being stopped in Bulgaria with a fake Spanish passport. CWM had high-profile sponsorship deals with the Honda Moto GP, Chelsea Football Club, Wigan Warriors rugby league club, Cyclone Boxing Promotions and the London Boat Show. The seven-week trial heard how Constantinou spent £2.5 million of investors' money on his 'no expense spared' wedding on the Greek island of Santorini in September 2014, while his son's first birthday party a few days earlier cost more than £70,000. More than £470,000 was paid for private jet hire to fly him and his associates to Moto GP races across Europe as well as a return flight to Nice for a 150,000-euro five-day yacht cruise around the Mediterranean to Monaco. The firm paid £200,000 a quarter to rent 'plush' offices in the City's Heron Tower, while nearly £600,000 was spent on just six months' rent of his large home in Hampstead, north-west London, where his luxury cars were parked in the drive. Promised returns of 60% per year on risk-free foreign exchange (FX) markets, a total of 312 investors trusted their money to CWM. Some were professionals but most were individuals who handed over their life savings or pension pots, with a large number of Gurkhas paying into the scheme, said prosecutor David Durose KC. Constantinou denied wrongdoing but was found guilty of one count of fraud, two counts of fraudulent trading and four counts of money laundering and sentenced to 14 years in prison in his absence. Adrian Foster, of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: 'This was a callous scam targeting members of the public. Many people lost their hard-earned money because of Constantinou's greed and false promises in this fake investment scheme. 'We continue to pursue the proceeds of crime robustly with the City of London Police, where we identify available assets to disrupt and deter large-scale frauds like this case. 'In the last five years, over £478 million has been recovered from CPS obtained confiscation orders, ensuring that thousands of convicted criminals cannot profit from their offending. £95 million of that amount has been returned to victims of crime, by way of compensation.' Constantinou was previously jailed for a year at the Old Bailey in 2016 after being found guilty of sexually assaulting two women during after-work drinks. One of the victims described how the parties were just like the raucous scenes depicted in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as rogue New York trader Jordan Belfort.
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Charles Ponzi's fascinating twist on the American Dream — as played by Sebastian Maniscalco
More than 100 years ago, the name Charles Ponzi was splashed on newspaper front pages across the land and poured from radio broadcasts, putting the phrase 'Ponzi Scheme' firmly into the arsenal of generations of would-be con artists. Sebastian Maniscalco, an Arlington Heights native who worked at a McDonald's long before becoming a successful actor and comedian, had very little knowledge of Ponzi when he got a call from a man named Will Malnati. 'I had once almost, almost, been the victim of a Ponzi scheme in the early 2000s,' Maniscalco told me. 'So at least I knew the name.' Malnati, a native of Northbrook and Northfield and a proud part of a family pizza empire, founded At Will Media in 2016, a Brooklyn-based, independently-owned podcast studio. It has produced many fine programs, including, in partnership with the Tribune, 'Unsealed: The Tylenol Murders' in 2022, and the haunting 'The Last Days of Cabrini-Green' last year. These two men have created an enlightening and entertaining eight-episode podcast series. 'Easy Money: The Charles Ponzi Story' is an Apple Original Podcast, produced by At Will Media, with Maniscalco as Ponzi. You can hear its first two episodes now, with future episodes arriving weekly through July 28. And here's how it came to be. 'A friend had sent me a YouTube link about Charles Ponzi, a pretty crude piece taped in a basement,' Malnati said. 'I didn't know much about Ponzi. I had heard the name, of course, but knew almost nothing about the man. So I started digging around and couldn't find a great deal. I wanted more, and so I started thinking of how this story could be told.' He was further grabbed by what he found to be marked similarities between Ponzi and Maniscalco. 'I only knew Sebastian as a fan, but I found his resemblance to Ponzi so striking that I gave him a call to see if he was interested in a project.' Maniscalco was a very busy man. Not only was he regularly on tour, often with Chicago's Pat McGann as his opening act, he has released six comedy specials, has had supporting roles in such films as 'The Green Mile' and 'The Irishman,' and wrote and starred, with Robert DeNiro, in 'About My Father.' Not incidentally, was already part of the podcast world, with 'The Pete and Sebastian Show,' which he described to me as, 'Just me and my buddy Pete (Correale, a stand-up comic and writer) sitting around talking.' Amid all of that, Maniscalco found time to listen to Malnati. 'I didn't know much about storytelling podcasts,' he said. To enlighten him, Malnati sent him links to 'Wild Things: Siegfried & Roy,' the Apple Original podcast produced by At Will Media in 2021. Maniscalco listened, often during the 20 minutes he spends each morning in a steam room. His reaction was 'Wow, this is fantastic.' And so did these two children of the Chicago suburbs team up, along with many others, to create Apple's first original scripted podcast. Fascinating in its details, 'Easy Money: The Charles Ponzi Story,' is polished in its production, each episode in the neighborhood of 40 minutes. There are many other characters, good ones and nasty ones. Yes, it focuses on a colorful, wide-reaching criminal but, thanks to some recently discovered letters, it's a love story too. The relationship between Ponzi and his wife Rose (performed by Candice Shedd-Thompson) is memorably touching. So, when I say Ponzi, what pops into your mind? Likely the face of Bernie Madoff, who orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in history which usually fails to credit, even mention, the creator of the scheme which is defined as 'a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.' Though there were variations of this boondoggle before Ponzi, he was its most colorful and talented practitioner (for a surprisingly short time), a 5-foot, 2-inch tall Italian immigrant of ambitions that eventually turned avaricious. Hosted with considerable charm by Maya Lau, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and podcaster, deeply researched and stylishly written by Matt Hickey and Kevin Hynes, it is directed by Katie Finneran, also from Chicago. This was all new to Maniscalco, who says, 'In my comedy, there's a lot of visualization in the way I tell stories. I can see things in my head. In movies, I'm on a set. I'm in the Copacabana in the 'Irishman,' there's Don Rickles over there on the stage. I don't have to visualize. Everything's right there in front of me. For this I'm alone in a sound booth. I have to use my imagination to create in my mind the Ponzi world, his office, the people around him. And I'm not moving and I like to move.' He found it all 'great learning experience' but also 'the hardest thing I've done in my career. … It's what I think might just be a new category, a new kind of podcast.' I told him I found his performance so energetic that I started feeling a grudging respect for Ponzi. 'I get that. This guy was sincere, misguided rather than evil,' Maniscalco told me. 'I think he felt a lot of pressure, especially from his mother, to grab the American Dream. He didn't come here to rip off the whole country and I know he had some regrets but it was amazing, the way he was able to seduce people. But still, a part of me feels sorry for the guy.'
Al Jazeera
11-06-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
‘I invested in a Ponzi scheme': Nigerians fall victim to crypto scams
Lagos, Nigeria — Mandela Fadahunsi, who works at a technical training school in Ikeja in Nigeria's Lagos, never believed he could fall victim to a Ponzi scheme. On April 6, the 26-year-old was starting his day when a WhatsApp notification lit up his phone screen. Someone on the group chat for investors of the cryptocurrency investment platform, Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX), had tried and failed to withdraw some funds, so they wanted to confirm if it was a general issue. Fadahunsi quickly logged on to his digital wallet and tried to withdraw 500 USDT, a cryptocurrency that stands for United States Dollar Tether, or simply Tether. But 24 hours later, a process that should have taken just 10 minutes was yet to complete. He knew then that something had gone wrong. He started to panic, but half-hoped it was just a glitch or a minor system error. 'They [CBEX administrators] said it was as a result of the excessive volume of people trying to withdraw, and that all withdrawals have been placed on hold until 15th of April,' Fadahunsi told Al Jazeera. On the 15th, he and fellow investors waited but heard nothing. On subsequent days, the administrators gave more excuses until the site stopped working altogether, and everyone's money disappeared without a trace. That is when he realised he had been scammed and might never be able to recover the 4,596 USDT stablecoin in his wallet. While Fadahunsi tallied his losses, the issue went viral on social media platforms. Many more Nigerians shared their stories of loss, while others mocked them for losing their money to scammers. Some members of the public, filled with rage, attacked and ransacked CBEX offices in Ibadan and Lagos. CBEX launched operations in Nigeria in July 2024, claiming to be able to generate immense trading profits using generative artificial intelligence. By January, it had gained serious popularity through referrals and smart advertising. Fadahunsi and thousands of other people invested with the hope of making a maximum profit – the scheme promised up to 100 percent return on investment after a 40- to 45-day maturation period. At the start, the scheme did pay out, and the testimonies of successful initial investors attracted more people to sign up. But after nine months of operation, the music stopped as the platform made away with an estimated 1.3 trillion naira ($840m), according to the official Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU). It left investors stunned. Nigeria's anticorruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has since labelled CBEX a Ponzi scheme. Experts say the organisers of such scams usually promise to invest people's money in something that generates high returns, but in reality, it is investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new ones. Once a large number of people cash out, and new investors into the scheme dry up, it collapses. Ponzi schemes, including CBEX, are usually not backed by any discernible economic activity, experts say. According to Ikemesit Effiong, from the Lagos-based socioeconomic advisory firm, SBM Intelligence, most times these businesses do not have anything to sell and have no recognisable business models. Even the agriculture-based ones claim to have products that investigators are unable to track. They also largely rely on existing investors to bring in new investors who serve as their downlink in the pyramid scheme. Experts say that in Nigeria, widespread financial illiteracy, lax regulations, greed, economic hardship and peer pressure make investors susceptible to the machinations of Ponzi organisations that combine aggressive advertising, word-of-mouth campaigns charged by incentives, and initial high returns. But at the end, the schemes leave victims – many of whom invest their savings, business capital, and borrowed money – unable to do anything but watch their hard-earned money disappear. Fadahunsi first heard about the CBEX scheme from colleagues at the start of the year. Initially, he was hesitant. But a few days later, his neighbour also mentioned the platform. Recognising that his close associates were participating, and not wanting to miss out, he decided to invest. 'I also thought the money was just sitting in my account, and it could be somewhere where I can make some gains on my money,' he explained. In early February, he dipped into his rent savings and withdrew the entire 800,000 naira ($517). With that, he bought 500 USDT from the crypto exchange platform Buybit, receiving the coin in his digital CBEX wallet. Four times a day on the CBEX platform, administrators dropped a code, which they call a 'signal'. Investors were required to copy and paste the code into a section of their portal within the hour. CBEX said AI would then use that to make a trade, basically to buy and sell or change positions in such a way that it made a profit from price fluctuations on the investors' behalf. Each time Fadahunsi pasted in the code, he would get 4.7 to 5 USDT as a profit, all of which accumulated towards his returns. 'So the more you do it, the more the percentage increases. In a month, I got double of 500 USDT,' he said, adding that there were also bonuses for things like referrals. In March, users said CBEX made an adjustment where they no longer input the signal. Instead, investors just had to turn on an 'AI hosting' option at the start of the day. But some investors say this was likely just a ploy to keep them going, to convince them they were still making a profit before everything crashed in April. While some investors withdrew their returns, by the time CBEX crashed, Fadahunsi had not withdrawn any money. He had wanted to maximise the investment opportunity, to leave the funds to grow for five to six months before using them to buy a plot of land to build his future home. Now, that dream is dead. 'It is very hard, but thank God that my landlord is actually understanding,' he said. 'I am not proud of opening my mouth [to say] that I actually invested in a Ponzi scheme,' he lamented. 'If I wasn't greedy, I should have been able to withdraw two to three times on the platform, and it would have been successful.' Even before CBEX, Ponzi schemes were not new in Nigeria. In March, Nigeria's anticorruption agency published a list of 58 Ponzi schemes presently operating in the country, and advised the public to 'be vigilant and proactive'. This highlights the widespread presence of fraudulent entities masquerading as legitimate businesses in the country: in 23 years, Nigerians lost 911 billion naira ($589m) to Ponzi-related scams, the National Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), which protects the country's banking system, said in 2022. Often, Ponzi schemes are able to operate by leveraging grey areas, such as obtaining an irrelevant certification that exaggerates their significance or legitimacy. CBEX, for instance, obtained the EFCC's anti-money laundering certificate through the corporate identity of ST Technologies International Ltd, and paraded it as a kind of clearance for conducting business. However, the NFIU said CBEX was never granted a registration by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate as a Digital Assets Exchange, solicit investments from the public or perform any other function within the Nigerian capital market. Legitimate businesses can be verified by checking the SEC website. However, experts say the vast majority of those who invest in shady schemes seem unaware or uneducated about this – 38 percent of Nigerians are financially illiterate, according to a 2023 central bank report. At the same time, other victims may be willing participants, at least at first. Joachim MacEbong, a senior analyst at Stears, a Lagos-based financial advisory firm, said while some victims are unwitting, others intentionally walk into Ponzi schemes hoping to make a quick profit before it crashes. 'There are those who know it is a scam, but they always feel they could cash out before everybody else. And so they would make that calculation, and it is largely because of the situation in the country; there is a lot of hardship. This kind of hardship increases the people's desire to take risks and gamble with their very important funds,' he explained. Nigeria's economy has been on a downward spiral for decades, and is worse now that the country is going through its toughest economic downturn in about 30 years. Food prices have soared, and basic amenities are becoming inaccessible as the inflation rate sits at 23.71 percent. Against this backdrop, some see Ponzi schemes as a fast way to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty. Like the proverbial early bird, early investors benefitted from the CBEX scheme, multiplying their returns for several months. Although social media is agog with complaints and bitter disappointment, some people said they had been able to make major purchases such as land and cars from their investment. 'The time scale at which you enter the investment will determine whether it will be a good investment or you will be a victim,' said Effiong of SBM Intelligence, but he added that many new investors are unaware of this catch. Waris Oyedele is one of the people who invested their savings in CBEX because of worsening financial hardship in the country. When he realised that the investment had crashed, he wept. The 25-year-old comes from a low-income family. He graduated from Obafemi Awolowo University last year, but when he could not get a job, he started working as a shoemaker. In January, he invested his savings of 800,000 naira (500 USDT); by March he had made 1,200 USDT. He gave the returns to his younger brother to reinvest to help him pay for his future university studies, and in doing so, help ease their father's financial burden. 'I felt bad [when we lost the money] because we had a lot of plans on it,' Oyedele said. 'I had a plan of buying a computer and going into UI/UX. Now it has gone.' He is deeply affected by the situation and has reduced the way he spends his tiny income as he tries to rebuild his savings for future use and to support his brother. Ponzi schemes play on psychology and human instincts by making it seem as though easy money is within reach, Effiong of SBM said. All investments involve some form of greed, Effiong explained, and the promise of ending up with a higher return is one of the most elementary forms of human motivation: we all want more and as quickly as possible. 'What [a Ponzi scheme] does is that it also unlocks the deep-seated psychological bend for human beings to join groups – the obvious fear of missing out,' he said. 'It also thrives on really aggressive marketing – all of that is to prey on the psychology of potential investors to not slow down.' Over the years, Ponzi schemes have employed several techniques to appeal to people, even going the extra mile to try and build public trust and goodwill. CBEX, for example, organised a sports competition and ran scholarships for schoolchildren to throw off suspicion, experts said. In Nigeria, schemes rely heavily on existing investors who are incentivised to introduce new investors. They also engage in aggressive marketing using local and social media, sometimes involving radio, influencers and celebrity endorsements. Afrobeats stars Davido and Rema are some of the most popular celebrities to have unknowingly endorsed and made promo videos for Ponzi schemes in the past. Ponzi schemes are also becoming increasingly sophisticated and dynamic as they leverage the latest technologies and digital tools, experts say. 'Many of them have apps with wonderful user experiences, which lend an air of credibility to their enterprise. Many of these scammers go to great lengths to design their products in such a way that they look and appear credible,' Effiong said. MacEbong from Stears agreed, saying fake news and misinformation campaigns will become supercharged using AI tools, making it easier to hoodwink unsuspecting victims. 'There are numerous examples of generative AI being used to fool people who are even well informed and more savvy. When you turn these various tools against people with much lower exposure and information, they are practically defenceless,' MacEbong explained. Regulators such as the SEC must become more proactive and come up with agile tactics to rein in Ponzi schemes and protect the public from illegitimate enterprises and shut them down before they cause harm, experts told Al Jazeera. Businesses must be registered and thoroughly vetted because Ponzi schemes have been erroneously certified in the past, Effiong emphasised. 'There has to be a lot of financial education. Financial literacy is critical, which goes beyond how to make money, but [also] to educate the public on the tell-tale signs of Ponzi schemes. The responsibility also lies with the general public to educate themselves. If it sounds too good to be true, chances are it is too good to be true,' he said. On May 26, EFCC said it had recovered a portion of the money stolen by CBEX and arrested two individuals promoting it. Al Jazeera tried to contact CBEX for comment through its website and publicly available phone numbers, but all were unavailable or out of service. Meanwhile, many investors like Fadahunsi have lost hope and believe that the money they invested is all gone. 'Whatsoever the authorities retrieve, I am sure that nothing is going to come to me; I moved on already,' he said. 'That is a very tough lesson for me. [Now,] I would rather keep my money in my account and spend it till the last dime.'
