A digital financial platform known as Crypto Bridge Exchange, or CBEX, which operates as a Ponzi scheme, has restarted its operations nationwide just weeks after it abruptly ceased activities and vanished with large sums of money from unsuspecting Nigerian investors.
According to investors, they have been instructed to revisit the platform to retrieve their lost funds.
“Someone asked me to log into CBEX account this morning that they have returned our balance,” an investor told the Peoples Gazette on Tuesday while sharing a screenshot of the restored funds.
The investors said the scheme’s operators are now demanding a $200 payment from each participant to reactivate their individual accounts and enable withdrawals.
“But I think it is a way of luring people into it again because we were asked to pay $200 to continue trading with the account before we can apply for withdrawal,” another investor told the Gazette. “So, the $200 is for those with investments above $1,000. All those below are asked to pay $100.”
In April, many Nigerians lost their entire savings when the scheme suddenly shut down, locking them out of their accounts.
The situation triggered widespread alarm and led to the looting of the CBEX office in Ibadan. Disguised as a digital investment platform, the scheme had promised to double investor deposits within 40 days.
The scheme’s Telegram group was disabled to prevent users from expressing their frustrations, while the CBEX team blamed the shutdown on a hacking incident, claiming their security infrastructure had been compromised.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission later reported that several individuals had been arrested in connection with the fraud, stating that the funds had been traced to at least three or four different countries.
Following the incident, the EFCC issued wanted notices for some of the scheme’s Nigerian collaborators and added two more names to the list last week.
Despite the arrests, the commission clarified that it may not be able to recover and refund the investments of all those affected by the scheme.
