Adewumi stated this in a series of tweets on Wednesday, alleging that scammers posing as Jumia staff invited her to register on a portal with the online marketing platform so that she could sell her items and start generating money for herself.
A Nigerian woman, Oluwadarasimi Adewumi has narrated how she lost a sum of N597,000 to online fraudsters while hunting for a job.
Adewumi stated this in a series of tweets on Wednesday, alleging that scammers posing as Jumia staff invited her to register on a portal with the online marketing platform so that she could sell her items and start generating money for herself.
In her tweets, she claimed that what made her to think of leaving her present job and hunting for another one was the inhuman treatment she was receiving from her employer.
She said she learned about Jumia from an online advertisement and that the initial transactions she made on the website were too legitimate for her to believe the entire process was a ruse to get her to invest more money on the site so she could be scammed.
Her tweets read: “Twitter, please come to my aid. I need everything and everyone to help me fish out the criminals that scammed me out of 597,000.
“I have been out of job for a while, and I have been job hunting, I’m currently on a job but I I was already planning to quit due to the inhumane conditions attached to the job.
“I was searching online for a job when I came across a job advert as an online representative for Jumia. I applied for the job and I was told I will sell something online, and get my commission from Jumia. A portal was created for me, everything seemed legit, and I was told to buy a product of 3k to start. I almost immediately sold the 3k product and made a profit of 900.
“Then, I was told there are higher sale levels I can go, to make better commission from the sales. They told me the next level was 15,000, so, after which according to the portal I sold, and also made profit as well. I was always transferring money to them through Opay and PalmPay accounts which are; I was constantly chatting with my referrer on WhatsApp and telegram on numbers.
“They were giving me instructions to follow anytime I sold on the portal. After then, they told me there’s a level I can get to, in which I would get only 100% commission and Jumia wouldn’t collect any commission from me. It was going smooth so far, that I thought less of it. They said the level was 244k.I mentioned I didn’t have that kind of money, and I don’t know what happened, they told me to call my family and friends to borrow from them.
“I immediately called one of my banker friends from the bank where I worked before to loan me 500k since I thought I would be able to make the money from sales.
“She loaned me the money with a promise to return before the COB.I never informed any of my family, or friends about this. This portal they used in communication with me is this, showing balance but I cannot withdraw it. Early this morning when I tried to call them on the number I was given, it rang but no one picked. I immediately called my brother, and he told me the loopholes and then mistakes I made.
“I do not know what to do, I’ve put my family in a deep mess, as I have no means of refunding the 500k I borrowed,” she added.
Twitter, please come to my aid. I need everything and everyone to help me fish out the criminals that scammed me out of 597,000.
I have been out of job for a while, and I have been job hunting, I’m currently on a job but I I was already planning to quit due to the inhumane 1/n pic.twitter.com/gvXfAIWXzE— Oluwadarasimi 😍😍😍 (@Adewumi1701) July 4, 2023
Adewunmi’s story is not a strange thing in Nigeria. In 2021, Palo Alto Networks, a California-based cyber-security company said Nigeria loses about N127 billion annually to internet fraud, an amount which represents 0.08% `of Nigeria’s gross domestic product.
According to the report, it showed how fraudsters become more proficient at scams over the past five years, employing more sophisticated tactics and tools to carry out Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, which is different from the classic “Yahoo Yahoo boys” scams 15 odd years ago.