Friday Agada, a Lagos resident, has recounted how Good Home Appliances 11, a scammer posing as a middleman between buyers and sellers of home appliances, defrauded him of N235,000 in December.
In December, Agada transferred N141,000 and N94,000 to a Wema Bank account bearing the name ‘Joshua Udi’ after Good Home Appliances 11 sent him the account details.
He explained that after he began chatting with the Instagram page, he clicked on the contact icon and continued the conversation on WhatsApp. There, they told him the price of the television, which had caught his interest.
“After I paid in two tranches for the smart TV, I asked for the seller’s contact. Good Home Appliances 11 gave me a number, but the person never answered any calls. So, I went back to WhatsApp to inform them
Agada said he began searching the internet for information about the page after they stopped communicating with him. A few days later, he discovered another page that confirmed Good Home Appliances 11 as a fraudulent account.
“At the time I found the page, it was called All Homes Used Items. It later changed to CleanDeclutterNo1, then to Good Home Appliances 11. The Instagram page I found had been tracking their activities. It featured many stories from people the fraudulent account had defrauded,” he said.
“I contacted OPay, my bank, and raised a dispute on their app. They said they would follow up with the recipient bank. I then visited Wema Bank’s headquarters, but they referred me back to my bank. Eventually, OPay closed the ticket. When I approached the police, they asked me to pay N60,000 for tracking, but I didn’t,” Agada explained.
Agada said he wouldn’t have fallen for the scam if he hadn’t trusted the page. He explained that the first post he saw from Good Home Appliances 11 was a sponsored one, which made him think they were a legitimate business. He added that his previous deal with a declutter page had gone smoothly, so he assumed others would be genuine.
FIJ called Good Home Appliances 11 on Sunday, but they didn’t answer. As of press time, they had not responded to a follow-up text message.