Businesswoman Narrates How Nigerian Police Entertained Fraudsters Who Scammed Her, Others Of $400,000 With Hennessy, Suggested Victims Hire Private Jet For Them
Chinagorom recounted how she was initially introduced to the group by a Nigerian lady named Chidimma Albert, who presented the scheme as a legitimate investment opportunity organised by a Chinese company.
ANigerian entrepreneur, Uchechi Mercy Chinagorom, has shared her harrowing experience of being defrauded of $400,000 by an international fraud ring led by Precious Chiradza.
Chinagorom recounted how she was initially introduced to the group by a Nigerian lady named Chidimma Albert, who presented the scheme as a legitimate investment opportunity organised by a Chinese company.
Chinagorom explained that she was convinced to invest after participating in conference video calls with the group’s leaders, including Precious Chiradza, who claimed to run a legitimate assets management company with physical offices in China and the US.
The group’s convincing presentation and online reviews reassured Chinagorom that the investment was genuine.
However, after investing $400,000, Chinagorom discovered that the group was operating a fraudulent scheme. She alleged that the group’s leaders, including Chiradza, had been aided in their escape from Nigeria by corrupt police officials at the National Cybercrime Centre (NCC).
Furthermore, Chinagorom claimed that she was targeted for assassination by some policemen from the C4i Strike Force (OCTOPUS), Rivers State Police Command, after she reported the fraud to the authorities. The policemen allegedly attempted to kill her after being bribed by the fraudsters.
“They convinced me through Precious Chiradza and I had to go and invest my money. The first money I invested was $30,000. So, that’s how I started and I now brought in some of my friends. At the end, we invested $400,000,” she narrated.
“They came to Nigeria and specifically came to Imo State on April 16, 2023. They had a programme in Owerri at Protea Hotel and Rockview Hotel. After the programme in Owerri, they also went to Lagos. The programme was basically where they talked about their business. They invited people for the programmes where they convinced people to buy into their business.
“It was a big programme and it was my first time of attending something of that nature and it was convincing. So, I said OK and I brought my very close friends and relatives and they invested.”
She explained that after the programmes were conducted in major cities across the country, they departed, leaving participants unable to withdraw their investments at that time.
“Their reason was that they were doing an upgrade and that one could only invest but not withdraw yet,” she said.
“I called Pria (Chiradza) to ask, ‘Why is it that we cannot withdraw.’ She said I shouldn’t worry and that they were upgrading their system. She said as soon as they were done with that, everybody would be able to withdraw.”
Arrest Of Key Group Leaders
Chinagorom, whose export businesses had been shattered, stated that days or weeks after she had a conversation with the leader of the organisation, QZ Assets Management’, Pria, she got a call that the business had crashed.
“I started calling these people and they blocked me. What I wanted was for them to talk to me, let me know, let me just hear from them but I was blocked all round. The WhatsApp group where I included those people, where they sent me a link to add people that committed their money, they shut those things down. The one Chidimma Albert, who brought me into the business, created, also shut down. Everything changed,” she said.
She, however, explained that while she was in Morocco, she got a call that the fraudsters were seen in Nigeria.
“I heard that they had just launched another programme in Dubai called Xandex, and that they were in Nigeria to promote its. They were flaunting the whole thing. Somebody screenshot the thing and sent to me that they would be in Port Harcourt. I had to reschedule my flight and came back to Port Harcourt.
“That was when I started talking to Ogochukwu Onyia because I met her in Lagos at one of the programmes. She was panicking too and I told her that I would be in Port Harcourt and she said she would also come. There was another guy she wanted us to go with but I declined. I told her that I wanted us to go to Port Harcourt alone because this guy might be an informant for those people because I saw how close he was with them.
“We agreed that we would go alone and eventually we discovered where they were and got them arrested. Before then I sent someone to find out where they were having the programme. Unfortunately, they knew that we were coming. I don’t know how they got the information but finally we got them arrested,” she narrated.
“After their arrest,” she said, “they were taken to Octopus Police Station in Port Harcourt and there everything started happening. When they were arrested, they were treated differently. They were kept in an air-conditioned office. They were given Hennessy and allowed to take Champagne and whiskey. The police provided those drinks. They were flaunting dollars.”
“They came with bundles of dollars and they were not shy to flaunt the money they had. So by the time they shared the money, they (policemen) just melted and started saying different things,” Chinagorom narrated.
“The night they were arrested, the police said, ‘You people came to our country to do this – you extorted our people; don’t worry, we are going to get to the root of this but at the end, it was a different thing all together,” she lamented.
“By the time the rhythm became different, I called one of the police personnel. I asked, ‘Why are they in office instead of a cell?’ He said they were foreigners and they had to treat them well so that they would be able to furnish them with the information that they needed. I knew something was wrong. When I got there the following day, they were still there in the office.
“I heard that they went to their hotel for the night- the police would take them there, they would change and the police would bring them back to the police station instead of being detained.”
She further explained that before they went to Port Harcourt, Ogochukwu Onyia had already reported the incident in Kubwa Police Station in Abuja.
“So when we arrested them, I was the one who took them into custody in Port Harcourt. We agreed to transfer the case to Abuja. Two policemen were already preparing the necessary paperwork to transport the suspects from Port-Harcourt to Abuja.”
She recounted that the police at Octopus began to obstruct their efforts to move the suspects.
“First, they made sure that all the flights we booked from Port Harcourt to Abuja departed before they released the paperwork on the first day. Seven seats went unused, and all the money was wasted,” she remarked bitterly.
The following day, the police requested that they book the flights again, but there were no seats available from Port Harcourt to Abuja. “We decided to go through the Owerri route. By the time we realized it, we had booked first-class tickets for all of them. There were two police officers and Pria Chiradza, Gugu Manana, Sicelokuhle Nyath, Samuel Adedefa, and Ogochukwu. The tickets were eight in total. The police even suggested booking a private jet, which cost $10,000, claiming these were high-profile suspects.”
“We contacted ValueJet, and they told us it would cost $10,000 to transport them from Port-Harcourt to Abuja due to fully booked flights. When we booked tickets from Owerri, two police officers, a male and a female, confided in Ogochukwu and me that an ambush was being planned to help the suspects escape. At that time, the suspects had already handed over their luggage to someone.”
“Observing the situation, the two police officers declared they would not embark on the journey, citing it as too dangerous. They insisted that any flight not departing from Port Harcourt was out of the question, and they didn’t mind staying an extra day in Port Harcourt. The officers claimed there was a conspiracy to kill them in an ambush. The two officers from Kubwa Police Station in Abuja came to collect the case file. One policewoman suggested booking a flight from Port-Harcourt to Lagos, then connecting to Abuja,” she narrated.
Assassination Plot
She described how, after collecting thousands of dollars, the police operatives planned to assassinate her to facilitate the fraudsters’ escape. Someone called her to inform her of a plan to shoot her in Port Harcourt, but she didn’t believe the threats since she was at the police station.
She said, “Unfortunately, I was sitting upstairs when a Hausa policeman walked in. He looked at me and shook his head. After a while, he approached and told me, ‘Madam, your people have betrayed you. Please find a way to pretend you want to buy something, then run and leave here.’ Ogochukwu Onyia was aware of this. That’s how I left Port-Harcourt. I was practically smuggled out of Port-Harcourt.”
“A night before, Chidimma Albert had called me, and she called me again the following day. So when the Hausa policeman contacted me, I had already started noticing suspicious moves from these police officers. The same policewoman from Kubwa Police Station told us she saw a policeman giving Pria Chiradza something to eat on the day they were supposed to travel to Owerri airport to board a flight to Abuja.
“When she walked in, they were shocked because they hadn’t discovered yet that they would not be embarking on the journey. She then told them they would not go through the Owerri route but would fly from Port Harcourt. The police must ensure their safety and escort them to the Port Harcourt airport, or they would not go. So they accepted.”
Regretting how Nigeria Police personnel could protect an international fraud ring above the interest of their citizens, Chinagorom noted that the police nearly wrecked her financially at the Port Harcourt police station.
Worse still, she said that Ogochukwu Onyia, who was in the struggle with her, went behind her back to sign an agreement to withdraw the charge already in court after receiving thousands of dollars, ignoring the investments of other Nigerians still hanging in the balance.
“Ogochukwu Onyia sent me a voice note saying that before I could reach Precious Chiradza, I must go through her. She would ensure that whatever I was doing would not succeed,” she said. “Through the voice message, I knew that Ogochukwu was heavily compromised, but I wasn’t sure, and the next thing I heard was that she had gone to China.”
Efforts by SaharaReporters to contact Rivers State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Grace Iringe-Koko, were unsuccessful as she did not answer her calls.
At the time of filing this report, she had not responded to a text message seeking her reaction.
