This is the story of a sophisticated scam network that cost its victims millions of dollars in different parts of the world.
For neighbours and shop owners around the building he lived in, an unpainted and unplastered storey building, David Erubure is a web developer and IT expert.
Many of Mr Erubure’s social media followers probably believe that he runs a “successful” web hosting company.
However, some of his actions became a subject of international investigation when many of the websites he hosted appeared in multiple fraudulent schemes.
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), in partnership with PREMIUM TIMES, carried out a months-long investigation into a multi-million dollar fraudulent scheme, including Mr Erubure’s role in it.
We found that Mr Erubure’s neighbours, shop owners and social media followers are not wrong about him. But there is more they probably do not know about him.
In Norway, a Northern European country, investment advice and “genius” tricks for making money are everywhere on TikTok: rental arbitrage, house flipping, and stocks you “should” buy.
Mi Le Hagen, an influencer, likes to offer investment advice. The influencer has made tens of thousands in the stock market and regularly shares tips on how her followers can succeed.
Between September and November last year, Ms Hagen started sharing investment advice with followers in direct messages.
“Right now I’m investing in Bitcoin and making good money from it. I can actually give you a good insight into how you can make money through Bitcoin,” she said.
Ms Hagen recommended using a secure investment website for virtual currencies, which were the cryptocurrencies she claimed to have made a lot of money from. The most popular in Norway are Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Meanwhile, there was 247autobot.com, one of the many fake investment websites operated as part of a large scam network.
People who invested money on the website watched their supposed returns grow on the screen. But the returns were not real. The money had never been invested. The scammers had simply stolen it.
“Oh my God. I was scammed out of 23,000 NOK (approx. $2,100),” said a victim who did not want to disclose their real name. That’s about N3.3 million using the current exchange rate of N1,344.45 per US dollar.
NOK stands for Norsk Krone, which translates to Norwegian krone in English. It is the official currency in Norway
This is the story of a sophisticated fraud network that has deceived people around the world, and the hunt for the ones who make it possible.
Mi Le Hagen understands that her followers are hungry for quick money. So, she desires to give them sensible guidance on saving and index funds. But someone, a scammer, was busy doing the opposite.
The person, posing as Ms Hagen, had copied her TikTok profile and was sending direct messages to her followers, some of whom unfortunately fell for the scam.
When she realised at first, she expressed surprise that she was famous enough for people to be copying her on TikTok. The followers contacted her – either to complain they had lost money or wanted to warn her about the fake accounts.
The fake profile created by the scammers was almost indistinguishable from the real one. In fact, the scammers copied many photos and posts from Ms Hagen’s real account. Some of the fake accounts even had more followers than hers.
“It affects my good name and reputation. I give guidance on long-term saving, not speculative tips meant to deliver short-term profit,” Ms Hagen told NRK.
The influencer was devastated. The fake profiles blocked her, so they were only visible to her followers.
She didn’t know how to stop them. All the while, new copy accounts kept appearing, and her followers were at risk of being deceived.
To unmask the identity of the scammer, the NRK was helped by Daniel Christensen, an ethical hacker who likes to hunt cybercriminals and expose fraud.
Mr Christensen had helped comedian Johan Golden to discover who was using his face and identity to scam people. During the time, he discovered clues that led him to a group of scammers operating on TikTok.
The scammers thought they had tricked another person into investing money on the website they had set up. They did not know that Mr Christensen was the wolf, and not the sheep.
“I could see immediately that the website (247autobot) was not legitimate,” Mr Christensen told NRK.
The scammers believed that they had convinced a new person to invest money through their fake website. But they did not know they were dealing with a man who was secretly looking for coding flaws – weaknesses in the scammers’ websites that could help to expose them.
It did not take Mr Christensen much time to get to the back-end of the website. What he saw as the site’s purpose was unmistakably clear: to scam people out of as much money as possible.
