When Mide Remi (real name withheld), a Lagos resident, stumbled on two job vacancies at Learnania Africa in June, little did he know he was entering a scammer’s den.

Remi told FIJ that he saw vacancies for the roles of a content creator and a customer service representative at Learnania Africa in June. He applied for the latter on June 18.

After a successful application, Learnania Africa emailed him on July 3 for an interview and requirements for the job. This was when he found that a Police Clearance Certificate (PCC) was one of the requirements.

“Only a couple of weeks were given for this but Learnania Africa provided options of where we could process a PCC quickly if we wanted to,” Remi told FIJ.

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According to Remi, Learnania Africa linked Certifos.com as one of the platforms where a PCC could be obtained within the stipulated time frame.

As seen in one of the documents obtained from Remi, Certifos provided a Wema Bank account number as its corporate bank account number. The account number, 7942682377, bore the name ‘Catios Ventures’.

He said he then signed up with Certifos, provided his information and paid N25,000 on that same day in July.

Remi’s PCC was supposed to be delivered to his address within a week of making the payment but he did not get it.

“When this didn’t happen, I visited the certifos website again to check the status of the certificate application,” Remi narrated.

“That’s when I saw that they were offering to refund applicants through Learnania Africa and I should fill a form to sort this. I tried to fill the form several times but it won’t let me submit.”

“I have tried to reach out to them through mail but there’s an auto response email sent back each time claiming they’re dealing with a lot of requests and they’d get back to me as quickly as possible.

“Their numbers aren’t going through and I can’t send WhatsApp messages to them either,” Remi added.

Remi told FIJ that he later observed that Learnania Africa had changed its requirements for the interview a couple of days later, claiming there was no need for it anymore.

“The interview was never set up but that’s fine. It is just very important I get my money back if Certifos won’t provide me a PCC. I suspect foul play,” said the job seeker.

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LEARNANIA AFRICA, CERTIFOS NO LONGER AVAILABLE

At the time Remi reported this issue to FIJ, certifos.com was still functional.

When FIJ checked the website on September 7, a pop-up message on the website read: “We got contacted by a company called LEARNANIA requesting we refund all individuals who paid for a PCC through us. Click the GET REFUND NOW button to process your refund.”

That same day, FIJ sent an email to the address [email protected] available on certifos.com. About a few minutes after sending the mail, FIJ received an automated response in the spam folder.

The message reads:

For Police Clearance Certificate, this is an automated reply.

We received communication from a company named Learnania Africa, asking for a full refund to be provided to all individuals who made payments for a PCC through our platform. Their representative also mentioned that an official statement would be released regarding this matter. For processing the refunds, kindly use this link certifos.com/refund. We apologize for our non-responsive on WhatsApp and emails as it received over 5000+ spam messages from several people attacking our credibility and loitering in our office at GCL Plaza.

However, following that day, the website became inaccessible. A Google search for certifos.com, as well as Learnania Africa’s website, displayed an error message.

Interestingly, FIJ’s findings showed that the two websites were hosted by cPanel. Also, while Certifos.com’s last social media activity was on July 5 as seen on its Instagram page, Learnania Africa had never made any post on its Instagram page at press time.

FIJ was also able to trace Catios Ventures, the name on the corporate account number Certifos provided to Remi, to an Abuja-based technology company that offers courses and consulting services on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Catios Ventures lists its address as Plot 150, Mechanic Village, Apo, FCT. Coincidentally, the corporate bank account on its payment page is the same as the Wema Bank account details Remi paid N25,000 to in July.

Meanwhile, further findings by FIJ revealed that many other job seekers like Remi got an offer from Learnania Africa. While searching for Learnania Africa on Twitter, FIJ found several complaints from those who applied and later found that it was a fraudulent scheme.

Learnania is a scam, big scam ⚠️🚨‼️

Disregard their recent mails. pic.twitter.com/g6ry3VxF3G

— Shelby Crypto (@shelbee_crypto) July 3, 2023

Certifos was created for the scam to look legit, you can also see when the website came live. First of Janurary 2023.
Please RUN pic.twitter.com/6H8weF7YBe

— Ayodeji Ayorinde (@geekdeelino) July 3, 2023