Operators of a wonder bank in Calabar, Cross River State have bolted away with N27 billion belonging to more than 13,000 depositors.
Micheno Multipurpose Cooperative Society, MMCS, is owned and operated by one Michael Eke, had promised depositors of N100,000 and an additional N50,000 at the end of 40 days, and those who deposit N150,000 would get the sum of N300,000 at the same period while a deposit of N1million would earn a N500,000 profit at the end of the same period while deposits above N1m are calculated in N1m units.
The scheme berthed in Calabar in June 2018 and had been attracting patronage from residents of the city number about 13,000.
Some of the depositors parted with their life savings and others deposited their gratuity which runs into millions with the hope of reaping bounty sums at the end of 40 days.
However, at the end of the 40 days, they got paltry alerts of their money while over 13,000 others did not get anything and have since not heard from the operators of the bank in the past one month and their office in Calabar shut.
The scheme started as a Swiss Marketing company on WhatsApp and in less than one month, the groups grew to about 36 all providing information on the benefits of joining the scheme and attracted a lot of people to deposit their monies with the scheme’s office in the city.
“I have N33m stocks with the scheme. It may not be much compared to what others have but this has destabilsed my life and turned me to mad woman with no bearing and I have lost interest in life and work,” Edna Nzegu, customer said.
The woman who said Mike Eke was acting “Without feeling the pain of the people he has defrauded.”
Some of the depositors accuse MC Mbakara, a Calabar-based comedian of conniving with Mr Eke to fleece them of their money by promoting the scheme on his WhatsApp thread and website which persuaded them to believe that the scheme is genuine and he has since gone into hiding.
Speaking from his hideout, Mbakara said he was not part of the company even when he was appointed vice president of the scheme by Eke.
“I have been accused of so many things I am not aware of. I am not on the run and not hiding. My phone lines have been open and I am very available,” insisting that he was only a brand ambassador whose following on and offline was used by Eke to drive an aggressive campaign that brought a lot of depositors to the scheme.
Ms Irne Ugbo, the Cross River Police Command spokesperson said reports had been made by some depositors of the scheme and investigations ongoing “to unravel what the scheme is about and what actually happened to the depositors’ funds.”
