Published 12th Apr, 2022

By Emmanuel Uti

Akinyemi Olufunsho, an animal nutritionist, has narrated how online fraudsters disguised as Opay Point of Sale (PoS) agents defrauded him of N120,000.

Olufunsho told FIJ that he stumbled upon a Facebook post on March 21 from an ‘Opay Nigeria’ page advertising PoS terminals. He said he chatted with the account and they told him they would help him become an OPay PoS agent.

He said the admin of the page sent him a phone number and asked him to chat with them on WhatsApp. Olufunsho stated that the scammer told him the fee for owning an OPay PoS was N20,000.

“I liked the offer and subscribed to it. I told them I wanted my wife to be the merchant, and they asked me to supply her details. Without hesitating, I gave them her bank verification number and other requested details,” he said.

“On March 23, OPay mailed me and said my wife now had an OPay account. The Facebook guy then asked me to fund the account with N20,000. They said the money would make it functional. After sending it, they acknowledged it.”

Olufunsho said the scammer asked him to deposit N50,000 in the account as his wife’s running capital, which he did. He said he received a message from OPay that he had indeed deposited N50,000 in the newly created account.

“When I asked the supposed agent for the PoS, they said they could not send the PoS because it goes for 100k. I had earlier received a mail from OPay that said the PoS was N50,000. But they said the email was erroneous. I sent them another 50k,” he said.

An OPay fake page sponsoring a post to deceive people

“I asked them for the delivery, but they asked me to wait till March 24. They told me to wait because I sent the money late. I then felt uncomfortable. I had to call OPay customer care to find out why they were delaying my PoS.”

Olufunsho said he realised that they had scammed him after his call with OPay. He said the OPay call representative told him the scammer opened an account using his wife’s name and his email but not her phone number.

He said he did not realise this on time because he thought an OPay merchant number would differ from an average OPay account number. Olufunsho said the call rep said they had transferred money from the account to another one.

“Later, I got an [email protected] mail and then I sent a mail explaining what happened to them. They told me to tell my bank to send them a mail, so they would determine where the scammers transferred the money to,” he said.

“As of now, OPay has not replied to my other emails. I do not want this person to defraud others. It is concerning that there is nothing I can do about this.”

When FIJ contacted Femi Hanson, spokesperson for OPay, he said they were engaging social media authorities so that accounts like that could be taken down.

“We engage Facebook and Twitter to take such pages down. We will also keep sensitising our customers to educate them about things like this,” he said.

In recent times, online fraudsters have been posing as fintech agents on social media platforms to fleece unsuspecting people. FIJ recently reported how a scammer posed as a Zenith Bank agent.

Images of scammers’ profile posing as OPay on Facebook

FIJ’s findings also showed that many fraudsters have proliferated Facebook with profiles designed to look like OPay to scam people. Some of them even sponsor posts.

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