Nigerian businessman Dozy Mmpbuosi, founder of American-based Tingo Group Inc, which is listed on NASDAQ as TIO, is a scammer. This was revealed by Hindenburg Research, an American forensic finance firm, which shorted the Tingo Group Inc’s shares after an extensive investigation which included visits to the company’s offices and facilities in Nigeria. Read their report here.
Key Revelations:
In 2017, Dozy was arrested and faced an 8-count indictment over issuance of bad checks, according to the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. He later settled the case in arbitration.
In 2019, Dozy claimed to have launched “Tingo Airlines” and posted social media messages encouraging customers to “fly with Tingo Airlines today”. Media outlets later uncovered that Tingo had photoshopped its logo onto pictures of airplanes. Dozy later admitted to never owning any actual aircraft.
In February 2023, the company held a groundbreaking ceremony for a planned $1.6 billion Nigerian food processing facility of its own, attended by the country’s agriculture minister and other political luminaries.
We found that the rendering of the planned facility, featured in Tingo’s investor materials and on a billboard at the ceremony, is actually a rendering of an oil refinery from a stock photo website.
Following its groundbreaking, Tingo reported in a May 2023 SEC filing that it made “significant progress” on the facility, including laying “the foundations of its numerous buildings”.
We visited the site a week later and found zero signs of progress; it was empty except for the plaque and billboard commemorating the groundbreaking ceremony, surrounded by weeds.
Tingo claimed that members of 2 unnamed farming cooperatives supply the majority of its then 9.3 million userbase, consisting of local Nigerian farmers. These farmers supposedly form the core of the company’s phone customers and provide the agricultural products used in Tingo’s food processing and trading businesses.
A local media outlet identified and contacted the cooperatives. Both said they had never heard of Tingo and had fewer than 100 farmers in each cooperative.
We were able to make contact with one of the cooperatives. Its owner reiterated having no relationship with Tingo and flat out told us “they are scammers”.
Tingo claimed its mobile handset leasing, call and data segments Tingo Mobile generated $128 million in revenue last quarter (~15% of total), claiming these services are provided through an agreement with Airtel (which Airtel has denied) in Nigeria. The type of license they claim did not exist until June, 2023.
Our checks with the Nigerian Communications Commission showed it has no record of Tingo being a mobile licensee at all, despite company claims of having 12 million mobile customers.
TingoPay (part of Tingo Mobile) claimed in 2021 to have launched a partnership with a Stanbic IBTC Bank
Two days after Tingo’s blockbuster announcement, Stanbic IBTC Bank put out a statement calling Tingo’s claim false and that it had “NOT concluded any agreement with Tingo International in respect of any payment system whatsoever”.
In a May 2023 press release, Tingo claimed its brand-new agricultural export business, Tingo DMCC, was on track to deliver over U.S. $1.34 billion in exports by Q3.
Tingo’s sales projections for that business are higher than the entire nation of Nigeria’s annual 2022 agricultural exports, which totaled about U.S. $1.15 billion, per government data.
Despite Tingo’s bold claims, we found no import/export records from Tingo at all through searches of Nigerian customs and trading databases.
