Anxiety was rife yesterday when investors of a new Ponzi Scheme identified as MONDELEX stormed their office around the Eliozu Flyover axis of Port Harcourt to receive their pay but met it locked.
The contacts of both the company’s MD and staff were also unreachable.
MONDELEX which promised it’s investors 50% returns on their capital within two days is just a week old in the city and had already garnered about two hundred Investors.
Some of the investors who spoke to Africhome News Team in the wake of the tragedy said some persons invested as high as 2, 3, 4 million naira with a particular woman leader from the area investing about 8 million naira said to be community fund.
Africhome also gathered that the company only received cash payments from investors. Electronic transactions were strictly restricted.
Staff of the company were said to have run away with funds on Tuesday night, hours before investors were supposed to receive their money.
One of the investors, named Bobo who spoke with our correspondent said he invested N100,000. Bobo was scheduled to cash out N150,000 on Tuesday morning.
“They asked me to return for the money on Wednesday morning. But my spirit kept telling me to collect my N100k that Tuesday. I was lying down on Wednesday morning when my siblings started saying, ‘those money People have run away’.
I rushed down to their office to meet a huge crowd. Many people had been asked to come for their money only to arrive their to meet their office locked and their lines switched off. I had fears they would run, but nobody expected them to disappear this early,” he said.
Bobo said he was moved to invest after his friend received N100k added to the N200k he invested. He narrated a sad account of a pregnant woman who invested her children’s school fees against her husband’s instruction. He said the woman kept crying in front of the shop.
When Africhome News Team visited the office on Thursday morning, it was wide open and empty. A deeply worried landlord, Benjamin told our correspondent that angry investors having waited for hours on Wednesday without the staff showing up, broke in and carted away office equipment.
Bobo is one those who moved equipment, said he was lucky to have laid hands on one of the company’s generating set. He said it was compensation for his “stolen money”.
But the landlord who lamented that himself and his wife and daughter also lost money to the scheme said he was deceived by the company when they came to rent his facility.
“When the man came, he said they were running a promotion for a company in town. They brought pictures of refrigerators, fans and generators that people will win. I was convinced. I started getting worried when crowd started to come here”.
Credits:City News Port Harcourt
