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HOW IT ALL STARTED

I am Chinonso Nwakaeme, my journey in the online space started 9 years ago. It has the bad, the ugly and the Good. I must confess making money online is not as easy as you think. In 2016, I started thinking of how to make money online but little did i know that I cannot do it alone. I joined an affiliate platform with N10,000 as of then and after few months the platform shuts down. I felt so bad that i lost that money because it was the only money i had after quitting my job thinking that the platform will make a millionaire.

In 2017 – 2018, I started a computer center with the laptop i was using as of then, I combined that with a teaching job that enabled me to raise some money because of my desire to make money online I never relented in joining other investment platform and I still lost money.

In 2019, I realized I needed a mentor, i wasted no time to get mentored by John Obidi, Emeka Nobis and Edrin Edewor. With this mentors, my making money online journey was smooth. Currently, I have made over $7000 online and still counting.

Online shopping scam: we lost $160

Our story

We were scammed by a very clever website advertising cheap barbeques. Payment was via credit card with a 2.99% fee, or direct transfer with a 5% discount. Then we received an email saying that due to logistic emails our order was cancelled and being refunded. Not surprisingly, the money has not been refunded. Very clever approach. The first time I have ever been scammed.

Annoymous

Signs this was a scam

• Very cheap prices from a very new website or seller were the first giveaways that this was a scam.
• The website encouraged the buyer to pay via direct bank transfer by offering a discount for this payment method, and charged a higher fee for credit card payment.

Avoid this type of scam

• Research the seller and check independent reviews from other consumers. If it’s a scam, often others would have also come across it and there may be reviews online
• Use a secure payment method such as credit card or PayPal. The biggest tip-off that it’s a scam is the payment method — scammers sometimes steer you to pay using unusual methods such as money order, pre-loaded money card or wire transfer. If you make a payment this way to a scammer, you’re highly unlikely to see that money again.

Business email compromise: our business lost $190 000 when our supplier’s email was hacked

Our story

We are the victims of an email hacking scam. The scammers appear to have hacked a supplier’s email and advised us of a change in bank details. The scammers sent us invoices with amended bank details as well as the prior email trail to and from the supplier, so they must have been in their IT system. Everything was a perfect copy of a real version of the invoices we were so used to. We didn’t notice the difference.

Thinking it was real, we sent an amount of $190 000 but the real supplier never received it. The email address was also correct for the supplier, but they told us that they did not receive our responses. The scammers seem to have some way of hiding our responses from the supplier. We didn’t find out about this until our supplier contacted us via phone to talk about not receiving the money.

Signs this was a scam

• The change in bank details was the only sign that this was a scam.
• Scammers often pose as one of your regular suppliers and tell you that their banking details have changed. They may tell you they have recently changed banks, and may use stolen letterhead and branding or even hacked emails to convince you they are legitimate.
• The scam was difficult to spot, as the invoices looked entirely genuine and the scammers had included copies of previous invoices. The business even checked that the email address of the sender matched the supplier’s email address.

Avoid this type of scam

• Contact the supplier directly using a second, reliable mode of communication such as a known phone number to verify any request to change bank details.
• Consider a multi-person approval process for transactions over a certain dollar threshold with processes in place to ensure the business billing you is the one you normally deal with.
• Prevent your IT systems from being compromised. Keep your IT security up-to-date by regularly patching your systems and running antivirus software, and have a good firewall to protect your data.