Monday May 26, 2025|
The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has disclosed that the commission has recovered a portion of the funds linked to the fraudulent activities of digital investment platform, Crypto Bridge Exchange (CBEX).
Speaking during an interview with TVC on Sunday, Olukoyede confirmed that several arrests have been made in connection with the CBEX scam.
“We’ve made substantial progress with the CBEX case and recovered a reasonable sum of money,” he said.
Despite the stolen funds being initially moved in cryptocurrency, the EFCC was able to trace and recover part of them. However, Olukoyede noted that converting the recovered crypto assets back into physical cash, especially U.S. dollars, has proven difficult due to the complex nature of crypto transactions.
He explained, “Even though the funds were in crypto wallets, just like how they were taken from the victims, there’s no way to retrieve them directly as cash without going through a similarly complicated process.”
The EFCC boss also revealed that some suspects are already in custody, while others remain at large.
“We’ve made reasonable arrests. We won’t disclose too much at this point to avoid jeopardizing ongoing operations. But we are still pursuing several individuals we’ve declared wanted,” he added.
Olukoyede further revealed that the investigation has been challenging, as the perpetrators used “non-custodial wallets” — digital wallets that do not require Know Your Customer (KYC) verification — making it harder to identify the account holders.
“We’re still investigating several wallets. The fraudsters used non-custodial wallets, meaning there’s no identifiable information. From there, they moved the funds to other wallets in Eastern Europe, particularly Cambodia, and then dispersed the money,” he said.
“Thankfully, we’ve managed to block some of these wallets before the funds were moved.”
He also warned Nigerians to be cautious, as some of the scammers are still active and unsuspecting individuals continue to fall victim.
“I understand that some of these perpetrators are still operating, and Nigerians are still being scammed. I believe it’s time people started learning from these incidents,” he said.
