My Money Mistake is a weekly PiggyVest series that explores the worst money mistakes real Nigerians have made, and the lessons they learnt from it.
For this week’s episode of My Money Mistake, we spoke to a social media manager who introduced her family to a Ponzi scheme where they lost over ₦10 million. She tells us how it happened, how her family handled it, and what she learnt from that experience.
Could you tell me about your money mistake?
A while back, a friend introduced me to this ‘investment’ opportunity. The appeal was pretty straightforward — you could earn a 20% monthly interest on any amount you deposited.
It sounded like a great deal, so I joined. After several months of consistently receiving my monthly interests, I convinced some family members to join, too. However, by the sixth month, the owner of the company behind the investment stopped responding to us.
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Ah!
Yeah, we kept trying to reach him, but he never answered our calls. When we did manage to get through to him a few times, he claimed something had gone wrong with the funds and promised to repay us according to a repayment plan. But eventually, he just disappeared completely.
Were there any red flags at the beginning?
My brother was wary because of the high monthly interest, but I didn’t really pay attention to his concerns.
I didn’t have any doubts because the company was registered with the CAC, and he showed us all his registration papers. The monthly interest rate was too tempting.
A friend had vouched for him based on her experience, and he had also earned my trust during those first few months, especially when my mom was ill.
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What happened with your mom?
Around the fifth month, heading into the sixth, my mom fell ill, and we needed to urgently withdraw part of her capital, around ₦5 million, to cover her hospital bills. He only gave us about half of it, around ₦2.5 million, and offered to give us the full amount, but I trusted him and declined his offer. We used the money we received to take care of her bills.
I thought the offer to give us all her capital when we made the request was proof that he only had good intentions.
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How did your family react to the news of his disappearance?
They were understanding and didn’t put too much pressure on me because they knew I hadn’t knowingly led them into a scam. The main challenge was for my husband and me, as we had to start over financially. But we’ve moved past it.
How much did you and your family invest in total?
We invested almost ₦12 million.
Did you benefit from this investment at all?
Not really, especially considering the loss. It was even tougher for my husband and in-laws, who joined just before the whole thing collapsed. I received consistent 20% returns for five months, but I wouldn’t really call it a benefit.
What lesson did you learn from this experience?
The biggest lesson I learnt is that there’s no such thing as fast money. There’s no investment out there that can consistently provide such high returns on a monthly basis.
Now, I’m also smarter. Even if you bring CAC documents or any other national documents, I’m still not giving you my money. I also have to admit that we were greedy, and we were scammed based on that. That’s definitely a lesson to hold on to.
