Topic: Rise in crypto related scam in Nigeria what is the course (Read 244 times)

I think Philippines and USA citizens are mostly victims.

Countries with high divorce rates, single motherhood, and sociality without love are always the target for these romance scammers - there are a lot of single parents in the United States and the Philippines.

And i completely agree with you on that. Maybe it's just been my bad luck, maybe it's just the circle i'm in.
But i agree as stated above, india is also very high in crypto scammers. And when i say india, i mean the bordering countries as well

Unfortunately, you have been meeting the wrong Nigerians, as there are many other Nigerians who are very credible in business and any other dealing and will not try to scam you.

Crypto related scams are not peculiar to Nigerians; there are people from other countries like India, China, Brazil, Pakistan, South Africa, Romania, the Philippines, etc. that are heavily involved in cyber criminal activities, even more sophisticated than what Nigerians do.

The media has sold to the market and world that Nigeria is filled with scammers and fraudsters, but that is a lie.

You are right I also think this post should be on the local board, as the locals can give better replies. I skipped this thread the first day to get an idea of what Nigerians think about it, as I thought within a day or two the post would be moved there. You are right NK hackers and scammers stole more than 2 billion dollars in 2024 alone. They are the biggest scammers and hackers.

At first, they do it for basic needs but with time and with success, it becomes their passion. I am not talking about Nigerian scammers alone as I am speaking of all the scammers out there. After getting no jobs they look online, and most of the time without proper guidance they fall into the wrong hands too, (not all as some chose this path on purpose). They don't realize the work they are doing can be spamming, for example, call center scams are world-famous, and few countries are on top of it (I won't name any).

The point is, I once went for a call center job interview. it was my first hunting for a job, so I went there, and the person asked me to read the script as English is not my first language and I did not know what was their agenda, he said we sell some TV receiver service and sell the device. he said I have to talk to the customer and ask them few questions, like where they live, their DOB, pet name etc. etc. They said you have to write down all the things on a note and provide it to us during the call and if we succeed in getting the password, we will force them to buy some subscription to TV. Well, it was my first time, but I was not dumb haha, I knew they would force blackmail them for money or maybe cancel some subscriptions. Well, I left the place after I realized this was just a scam job to scam others. A month or two later, the person left the city due to legal issues (gladly).

The hype of getting a job in a poor country where you cannot find a job easily, and once you find one where you don't have to be a construction worker, dishwasher, or waiter but have to sit in an AC room in front of the screen, you just don't come to get second thought, as you think they have this big company setup, how come they can be a fraud? Therefore we must give proper education to everyone to devote their love towards their country by not doing such things and how to avoid such scam jobs where you have to scam others.

After this come those who are just after money, and they just want to make money, for them I have no words, as Logitech explained it better.

I don't know why you are talking about crypto scam and highlighting Nigeria, there are crypto scammers all over the world and what statistics do you have to back up your claim that there is a rise in crypto scammers from Nigeria. There are crypto scammers in the U.S., in Europe and in Asia, you should talk about the rise in crypto scam without calling out Nigerians and then the discussion will make a whole lot of sense.

Poverty is widespread and not just in Nigeria, Fraud is always happening everywhere with different intensities.
Developing countries like Korea, China and some other countries commit premeditated scams and they don't even go undetected and make it seem as if people from other countries are doing it. They are syndicates that commit fraud professionally.

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Yes, the OP should have provided the reference link that he read because he had made the assumption that Nigeria was the biggest fraudster.
Scams are actually spread across different countries as crypto has become easier to use as a fraud tool anonymously and very quickly to remove traces.

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I live in Indonesia and romantic scams like this happen to people who are indeed lacking in digital literacy, they don't know that random people who contact them with handsome and beautiful photos will just trap and extort their money.

Indonesia is not the perpetrator, but the victim of romantic scams and this often happens, because I have seen some people in the area who are affected by this kind of seduction and those people are from India, China and some people from Saudi Arabia (It is not clear about their status)

When you look at the situation, it seems perfect - because you have a country that is on the black list, which almost no one trusts, and therefore it is an ideal culprit that cannot defend itself. It never seemed to me that their hackers were that capable, especially since the internet is a high privilege in that country and such skills are hard to find.


Maybe it's just my opinion, but it seems to me that the real paradise for romantic scams is the Philippines and Indonesia, considering the news coming from that part of the world.

Hundreds rescued from love scam centre in the Philippines

The crypto scam scheme is not only Nigerian, it spans across different countries Maybe it's more rampant in some countries than the others I guess that's why people call Nigerian more.

But there is this thing with identifying opportunity and hopping on it, I feel that's what crypto scammers are doing but it's now the negative direction, that moment when crypto is on the increase, a lot of people are trying to tap into it, both the meme coins, the alt coin and holding Bitcoin. So now scamers see an increase in individuals getting into the crypto space and they are now making use of the opening but in the negative direction.

For whatever reason it can be poverty, it can be greed or the bad economic situations in different countries.  We are advised to safeguard our digital assets very well and be careful how you let people know your seed phrase or handle your devices where you holding your coins.

Every African who was exposed either identified as Nigerian or was identified as such by the media, thus the cycle continues. The example you provided about North Korea is perfect; at this point, all crypto hackers hide under the country's guise, and all hacks are associated with the Lazarus group, while it's possible that other dangerous groups outside of North Korea are carrying out the entire scheme.

Poverty and a severe lack of jobs are major contributors to the romantic scams that are prevalent in several West African nations.

That's just one of the reasons - but if you take poverty as the main motivating factor, which is why Nigeria is always in focus when it comes to scams, why isn't the same happening with other poor countries in Africa? Maybe it's because of the large population that Nigeria has and the fact that it has a very young population, but maybe a lot of scammers are just pretending to be from Nigeria because they have obviously become someone who is the easiest to stick such a label on.

The situation is similar with the agenda that all major hacks come from North Korea, as if there are no hackers in the rest of the world.

Nigeria gets memed a lot for its large amount of crypto scammers and 'nigerian prince schemes' that make all the honest people who live there look bad.

Although scammers can really come from anywhere, but particularly the scam rings are to be found in poorer countries. It is more likely you find a scamming base in Cambodia than in the USA, for example.

IMO its down to a lack of education and can happen in any country. I myself was
scammed a few years ago through a HYIP site purely because I was not educated,
I never heard of these sites before and the deal looked very promising, actually
too good to be true more like.

So anyone with limited means will always look to improve their situation but sometimes
they get scammed. Its a sad state of affairs because these people are the last who
can afford to get scammed.

Actually yes i can. Most of the time when i have time to "play with them" i end up exposing their connection and their IP, and like i said, 9 out of 10 times it's from Nigeria.
Heck, one time i managed to turn on the guys phone camera see his face. (yes, i know, the face doesn't tell me he is from Nigeria, but his phone location certainly does)

I like how you placed your words and sorry for the ordeal you had with those Nigerians that tried to scam you and we should know that scamming is a thing of global concern and not just about a particular country being the case study. Likewise, i have faced scamming attempts by some foreigners but i won't mention the names of the countries. Just as you said that it could be poverty issue, so it is then i would also want to add greed because there are folks who are rich but they lack contentment which makes them try to scam others to acquire more wealth to themselves through dubious means.

Some scammers from other countries usually claim to be Nigerians. I also read news of how scammers from other countries are relocating to Nigeria to carry out criminal activities and give the country a bad name. In a single raid by some law enforcement agents about 148 Chinese, 40 Filipinos, two Kharzartans, one Pakistani, one Indonesian were arrested.


Crypto scams is not just popular in Nigeria, they exist almost in every part of the world. Poverty and greed are the main reason why people in developing nations fall prey to these scammers.


Poor crypto education could be another cause. Ignorant people can be easily deceived. I have heard people discussing how they were taught how to mine Bitcoin with an Android phone. When I looked at the application, it was a clear scam.

I agree with this. Same with ours I guess, theres plenty of scammers hiding under the false pretense of crypto umbrella. They use the crypto to lure them on a perfect trap. Nobody wants to get scammed. But there will always be people who lost their will to the devip just to earn money from normal people who began to wonder in crypto. It seems Nigerian Government need to apprehend those lazy scammers. Its maybe due to economical aspect of living but doing bad things to take advantage of others will be always wrong no matter how tou justify it.

Lack of knowledge and negligence. When the victim doesn't have an idea of the scam tricks, they're likely to fall for it. Don't forget also about the victims being greedy.

Scams are everywhere and you're not the only country that are being described with that identification. But scammers leading to scam people is because they don't have other opportunities and that results into poverty.

When it comes to online scam I don't think scammers gives their right identity of where they come from, every information about scammers online are false, so you can't tell who really  they are or where they come from. The internet is so big and we have good and bad people which you can't even tell their location where they are from. There is no place where you will go and you won't come across scammers both online and offline. Their are cryptocurrency scammers in telegram, Facebook and all other social media and you can't really tell the where the scammers are from.

There are no excuse why people choose to become scammers, not even bad government.  People decides to be scammers because they are to lazy to Labour for a better life. Their are people who are living in countries where we have bad government and they are still doing well for themselves without illegal way of making money.

Can you please tell how you realized they were Nigerians.

Can you tell what will be the chance of them being some other AF countries aside Nigerians?

Poverty eh, we might be a developing country but aside that i do not see us being retched and poverty strike like you think, with the efforts from an average Nigeria meeting his needs, in some countries that will be enough to guarantee a better standard of living. Our mentality are straight, we work rightly for what we want only there are few who also want more than they should have and chooses to skip the process, I think there are worst scammers in countries than they are in Nigeria, let's forget about google rankings and be true to ourselves.

even though Nigeria stands tall when we talk about an African country that is actively involved in this digital space and so, when the topic of scams is being disused, we tend to receive the attention as a country that leads the movement, the reality is far from what has been projected on the media space.

the scammers that are either Nigerian or non-Nigerians still targets Nigerians who also get scammed in the process. scam is a global trend that is a function of personality and not just about the region one comes from. Nigeria is a very religious country, and it is hard to find a core religious person being fully involved in scam. this is never to say that there are no scammers that are of Nigerian descent or that they don't occupy a certain percentage of the population of scammers on the digital space, they are certainly in their umbers same way other countries also have scammers that are of those regions. poverty might be the root cause, but greed is the propelling force that amplifies and highten the extent of scams both in crypto and the overall digital space.