Mercy Jacob, a supposed clothing vendor, took N83,000 from information technology officer Oluwayomi Agboola for clothes delivery in November. After taking the money, she stalled at first, then blocked Agboola afterwards.

Agboola, an Ibadan resident and cloth dealer, made a post on an Ibadan-Lagos Facebook marketplace in November to request some clothing she needed for her customers; it was for this request that Jacob reached out to her on WhatsApp.

“The Ibadan-Lagos marketplace Facebook marketplace is a group where people from different towns market their products,” Agboola explained.

“If you are in need of any product for a customer and you don’t have it, you can post on the group, and people on the group can reach out to you that they have it and you can then get it from them.”

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Two days after making her request post, Agboola got a message from Jacob that she had the products she wanted to buy. This set what Agboola would later regret in motion.

“We got talking, but along the line, I realised that the shade she had was not the one the customer wanted. All these were in early November,” Agboola recalled.

Later in November, Agboola made another post on the Facebook page seeking to purchase jean trousers for her customers. It was this particular one that led to their first transaction.

“She (Jacob) commented that she had them and she could get them for me. The next day, we finalised the order. She asked if I had other orders, that she had a supplier in Lagos. If I was in need of any other thing aside the order I made earlier, she could get them for me. She said she was travelling to Lagos because it was getting close to the festive period,” Agboola said.

Agboola had earlier made a N40,000 transfer to Jacob for the jean order. But when Jacob said she could help her purchase other clothing, she ordered an additional N43,000 worth of clothing.

Jacob had informed Agboola that she would be back to Ibadan on the same day, and that she should send her rider later in the day to Apata to receive the products from her.

Jacob did not get back early enough for Agboola to get the products through her rider.

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“Around noon the following day, I was able to reach out to the rider. The rider informed me that he has been trying to reach out to her. He said she picked up initially, but when he got to the area, she did not show up, and she was also not taking her call, so he had to leave,” Agboola recounted.

“Later, I tried her number but she said she had not seen my rider. Then I spoke with her that I was calling the rider to come around. There was this back and forth till late in the night.”

The following day, when Agboola contacted her again, Jacob stopped responding. After a week, she then blocked Agboola and the rider. There were no other ways to contact her.

Some other things FIJ found about Jacob strongly suggest she is a dubious character.

First, while her Facebook username bore the name Esther Francis, the one displayed on her Truecaller profile was Mercy Jacob Enterprises. These two were also different from ‘Ecstasy Data ABO’, the name on her Moniepoint MFB account.

When FIJ called Jacobs on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, her line was constantly switched off. She also did not respond to FIJ’s text since Tuesday.