Like many other pump-and-dump schemes carried out in Uganda recently, Fidelity was running off the back of popular crypto exchange Binance. They promised traders and investors that they would get heavy returns on their investments and that the guarantee they offered was backed by the Crypto giant Binance.
Yepbit was promising a crypto trading bot that required no skills from the investor. All they needed was to transfer their money from Binance and set the time period before which they couldn’t withdraw earnings. The returns were also daily and compounding at the same time.
Many scammers are also promoting their own AI trading bots or agents, which in most cases need full access to a victim’s official Binance account to perform trades autonomously.
https://www.tiktok.com/@principalpiusmediaug/video/7668660028949253397
These fraud schemes managed to penetrate even rural areas of the country with the current widespread use of smartphones and the reach of the internet. The promises to earn while the investors do other things have always been too good for many to stay away.
The con artist in this scheme developed a deepfake AI assistant named Professor Jonathan Brook that they showed to their victims to convince them that they had legitimate professionals guiding and providing the investment advice.
The primary account for the scammers on TikTok was https://www.tiktok.com/@fcig.yepbit, which has since been shut down.
The fraudsters in this scheme are contacting victims and telling them to pay a 20% fee of their investment to be given access to their investment balances. This is typical scam behavior where the thieves will continue to try as much as possible to drain whatever they can from the already-victimized victims.
These Apps are preying on the desperation of many Ugandans by promising them returns in what appears to be a legitimate venture.
A lot of awareness has to be done by the authorities to sensitize Ugandans to stay away from these scams, just as we had intervention in loan shark apps.
Apps like DSJ asked for 20% tax, and after paying, they introduced another exchange and told victims to deposit another 100$ to activate their accounts, and that they would transfer funds to the new accounts, which they didn’t do.
The offices a re now closed and abandoned by the fraudsters and there is no help for the victims.
https://www.tiktok[.]com/@principalpiusmediaug/video/7669572307530059028
