•How fake airline discounts use N500 bait to empty thousands of bank accounts
What began as a harmless-looking airline discount offer of just N500 as a “processing fee” has now been exposed as one of the most sophisticated financial fraud operations uncovered in Nigeria in recent years.
At the heart of the scheme are two interlinked fraud models: a fake airline ticket promotion and the so-called Fred and Farida (FF) investment scheme, both designed to harvest personal banking data, hijack accounts, and drain victims’ savings in all banks linked to their Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) almost instantly.
According to revelations by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the operations ran quietly between 2024 and 2025, spreading “like wildfire” across social media platforms and messaging apps, ensnaring thousands of victims before authorities began to fully grasp the scale and complexity of the network behind it.
For those who would ask how it works, here is the explanation. Victims would receive a message advertising heavily discounted international airline tickets or an exclusive investment opportunity tied to travel benefits.
The offer appeared time-bound, urgent, and irresistible. To “secure a slot,” recipients were asked to pay just N500 into a specified bank account, described as a processing or verification fee.
What made the scam particularly convincing was that the N500 was often paid into a legitimate airline’s bank account, without the airline’s knowledge.
When cautious victims contacted their banks to verify the account, confirmation would come back that the account genuinely belonged to the airline and so, trust was instantly established.
After the initial N500 payment, the wired system would automatically contact the victims again, sometimes within minutes and ask them to “complete” the process by clicking a link.
On rare occasions, they request victims’ personal information, including names, phone numbers, account numbers, and, in some cases, Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs). Mind you, that trust may have been established ab initio, especially concerning the FF ‘investments’.
Victims were told the information was needed to issue tickets, process refunds, or confirm eligibility for the Fred and Farida investment returns, but, in reality, this information was the key that unlocked their financial lives.
EFCC’s Director of Public Affairs Commander CE Wilson Uwujaren, disclosed recently that once criminals gained access to victims’ banking credentials, accounts were cleared within seconds.
“Funds were swiftly transferred through multiple accounts, converted into cryptocurrency, and dispersed beyond immediate traceability.
“Moving money of this scale cannot be done with a single account.
“They need many accounts, hundreds, sometimes thousands, to move funds quickly and invisibly,” he said.
Victims often only realised what had happened when transaction alerts flooded their phones or when their balances suddenly dropped to zero.
Parallel to the airline discount scam was the Fred and Farida popularly known as FF investment fraud, which promised unusually high returns through what was presented as a structured investment platform.
Victims were encouraged to believe they were participating in a legitimate financial opportunity, sometimes framed as foreign-backed or aviation-linked investments.
Investigators revealed that proceeds from the airline scam were often merged with FF investment funds, creating a complex financial web that made tracing individual losses more difficult.
In total, EFCC has so far traced N162 billion passing through one major financial institution (name withheld due to on-going investigations), with N18 billion already confirmed as proceeds of crime.
The remaining funds are under active investigation, but officials say the transaction patterns are the same,” suggesting they are likely connected to criminal activity.
Another disturbing discovery was the existence of organised “account suppliers,” also referred to by suspects as “KYC boys.”
These individuals were recruited, trained, and equipped with dedicated laptops, software and Internet. They were tasked with sourcing bank accounts in bulk. According to EFCC findings, they travelled to rural communities and villages, targeting elderly, poor, or financially naive citizens.
For as little as N1, 500 to N2, 000, victims were persuaded to surrender their BVNs and personal identity details once the accounts were opened.
In many cases, the individuals did not even understand what a BVN was or how dangerous surrendering it could be.
Their identities were then used to open multiple bank, microfinance, and fintech accounts.
In one fintech institution alone, for instance, investigators discovered up to 1, 700 accounts opened using harvested identities.
In another case, a single individual was linked to 960 bank accounts, all tied to one BVN, an anomaly described by EFCC as “deeply suspicious.”
“These people don’t even know crimes are being committed in their names. So, when arrests began, the first people picked up were often innocent victims,” the director said.
The EFCC confirmed that commercial banks, microfinance banks, and fintech companies were all involved at different levels, either through weak compliance systems or internal compromise.
Some officials of financial institutions were detained during investigations and later released, while others are actively assisting the commission.
Although names of the institutions have not yet been made public, the EFCC said disclosures would follow once investigations are concluded.
The breakthrough came when investigators intercepted communications involving a principal suspect who referred to someone as an “account supplier.”
Curious about the term, EFCC operatives allowed the suspect to place a call under surveillance and arranged a meeting at a hotel in Abuja.
When the supposed supplier arrived, he was arrested on the spot.
Interrogation revealed the full scale of the BVN harvesting operation and its links to the airline and FF investment scams.
As investigations expanded, more victims began to approach the commission, many in tears, recounting how their life savings had vanished overnight.
Another big elephant in this room is that the fraud was not entirely home-grown, a foreign computer rascal linked to the scheme is said to be currently on Interpol’s watch-list, indicating the transnational nature of the operation.
Funds were routinely converted into cryptocurrency and moved across borders, making recovery more difficult and highlighting Nigeria’s exposure to global cyber-financial crime networks.
One airline whose account was used to collect the N500 processing fees told investigators that it was completely unaware of the scam.
The company said it noticed small deposits trickling into its account but had no idea why and where they were coming in.
Once informed, the airline was directed to issue public disclaimers and refund all illicit payments to victims, which it has done.
When asked what measures were taken when the small amounts were trickling in, the airline said it reported the fraudulent pages to Meta, although EFCC noted that social media enforcement alone is insufficient to stop such crimes.
Beyond financial losses, EFCC described the scheme as a national security threat, warning that mass compromise of BVNs and personal identities exposes Nigeria’s entire financial ecosystem to abuse.
With revelations like these, Nigerians must remain vigilant and know that no legitimate government agency or bank would ever request BVNs or personal banking details via unsolicited calls, texts, or social media messages.
“Any message asking for your BVN or account details is automatically a scam,” the commission warned.
To this end, analysts have noted that regulatory bodies like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) must urgently restrict the number of accounts an individual can operate because the current system allows criminals to exploit regulatory blind spots.
“If one person is operating hundreds of accounts, that is not innovation; that is a red flag, and it is expected that the regulatory bodies would act before more Nigerians fall into such harmless-looking scams,” an analyst told the reporter.
SOURCE: thesun.ng