Published 2nd Jun, 2022

By Daniel Ojukwu

Zuma Cash, a quick loan outfit, has admitted to defaming its defaulting customers by sending defamatory messages to their phone contacts, referring to them as paedophiles and promiscuous people.

A Zuma Cash agent, who asked not to be named, confirmed to FIJ that the company accesses contact details of these customers and then sends these messages to them via WhatsApp.

During an interview with our reporter, the agent also confirmed that these messages are sent with the backing and approval of the company’s legal department.

“It is our legal department that sends messages. There is a number there and a face there,” this agent told our reporter.

“They send a number, a BVN and a picture, so if you know the person, you can call the person.

“I am not the one who sends the messages; it is our legal department that sends them.”

When FIJ requested access to someone in this ‘legal department’, the agent ended the call.

The latest defamatory message that led to the interview was sent to the phone contacts of Abiodun Fagbemi (not real name), a customer that was unable to repay his loan in May.

Fagbemi had borrowed N11,000 from the company on May 15, with the promise to repay N17,000 on May 22.

On May 24, he told this agent that he was making attempts to repay but he could not find a bank account number to pay into.

“There was no account number I could repay the loan into and there was also no network in the area I was in. When they called me, I told them I wasn’t in a place I could do anything,” Fagbemi told FIJ.

“The defamatory messages came two days after the due date.”

The defamatory messages the company sent contained Fagbemi’s picture and a message describing him as a ‘fraudster and child rapist.’

Message sent to Fagbemi's contacts by Zuma Cash — Message sent to Fagbemi’s contacts by Zuma Cash

“He’s wanted by the police for sexually harassing [sic] and raping underaged children. He is a wanted rapist and should be reported to the nearby police station or authorities,” the message read.

The agent further sent ‘proof’ of previous defamatory actions taken against other alleged defaulters’ to Fagbemi’s contacts.

“This married woman has been going around sleeping with neighbours, friends and colleagues in her business place, even the one child she gave birth to was not from her husband,” one of the previous messages that was used in defaming a lady who also owed the company read.

“Please to all married women, watch your husbands because your husband might be next on the line. She is going around.”

Further investigations by FIJ revealed that the agent had made over 2,556 phone calls to multiple numbers in the past 60 days — a figure that equates to about 42 calls a day.

The number had also been reported for harassment to Truecaller, a phone application that has features of caller identification, by 76 people in the past.

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