December 03, (THEWILL) – The past few months have been a trying period for Hanu Fejiro Agbodje, the founder of Patricia, an e-commerce platform and crypto-currency firm. The information technology firm is neck deep in debt as a result of alleged fraudulent activity and a security breach that took place on the platform which greatly affected N2 billion of its customers’ funds. Instead of disappearing into the thin air, Hanu decided to convert the trapped funds into Patricia shares as a solution to resolve the debt issue. Now respite has come for Hanu as one of the perpetrators of the security breach has been nabbed. Incidentally, he is a politician who once contested a governorship election in Cross Rivers State. He is Wilfred Bonse. He has been arrested by the police on charges of conspiracy to launder the sum of N50 million that originated from the fraudulent diversion of N607 million on Patricia. The Nigeria Police Force was able to track and arrest him with the help of their national cybercrime centre.
The N607 million is part of the N2 billion that Patricia lost on its crypto processing platform in May. Bonse allegedly received the funds through a crypto-currency wallet. The case involves a criminal conspiracy, unauthorised modification of computer systems, network data, and the unlawful diversion of funds amounting to over N200 million.
Apparently, Bonse isn’t the only one involved in this matter. There are other people who are at large. Although the N607 million isn’t all the money lost, it would go a long way to pacify Hanu’s customers. A graduate of Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Port Harcourt, 27 year old Hanu began Patricia.com in 2017. It was supposed to be a side hustle to earn an extra N30,000 a month but as fate would have it, the business grew beyond his imagination.
Recalling how it all started, he said he had an uncle who visited Nigeria, and who used to give him iTunes gift cards. He didn’t own an iPhone and so had no use for it. He then tried to find where he could exchange the cards for real money and couldn’t find any local company doing that and he ended up getting scammed of the card.
At that point, he realised he had stumbled on to something. He figured that if he had this problem, there would be others most likely to have the same problem and that was how Patricia was born. At the height of its fame, Patricia was described by industry watchers as one of the fastest growing e-Commerce firms in Nigeria and Africa.
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