It looked genius. Download an app, switch on a feature called “hosting,” and let AI trade for you. No charts, no strategy, just sit back and watch your money double in 35 days.
CBEX, the app behind it, claimed its AI ran trades twice a day. If you referred friends, it’d trade three times. Social media noise pulled in thousands of Nigerians. Dashboards showed fake profits. Withdrawals worked. For months, it felt real.
Then, the lights went out.
Profits vanished. Balances dropped to zero. Withdrawals froze. CBEX blamed “hackers" and even tried to play the long con and double down, asking victims to pay $100–$200 to “recover” their funds through a fake “compensation program.”
The damage? Media reports floated “hundreds of millions” of naira. Victims say it’s closer to ₦9.7 billion (~$6.1M USD) wiped out.
This wasn’t your typical sloppy scam. It was well-built with AI for legs, featuring AI-generated trading logs and bot-run customer support. It looked legit until it wasn’t.
For many Nigerians facing hard times, CBEX felt like a shortcut to stability. But what it delivered was another painful lesson. Like any other scam we've seen in the past, it’s still the same old con, but in a shinier suit.
And it won’t be the last.
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