CBEX’s crash leaves trail of financial ruin as investors question how such a massive scheme went unchecked.
Thousands of Nigerians have lost billions after CBEX, a digital asset trading platform, vanished with over N1.3 trillion in investor funds. The platform, which promised a 100% return on investment within 30 days, collapsed on Monday, freezing withdrawals and shutting down its Telegram channels.
Investors reported waking up to empty wallets. “I logged in and saw zero balance. Everything vanished,” said one user. CBEX then introduced a suspicious “verification” phase, asking for $100–$200 to “recover” lost funds.
It was reported that behind the scenes, investors’ deposits were funneled into a TRX (Tron) wallet, quickly converted to USDT and then ETH. Meanwhile, what appeared on users’ dashboards were fake balances — artificially generated figures showing fictitious AI trading profits.
Analysts believe it functioned as a Ponzi scheme. “They used new investors’ money to fake profits for old ones,” one expert noted.
In reality, the scheme ran like a typical Ponzi structure, using funds from new investors to simulate returns for earlier ones.
After the platform’s crash, CBEX introduced a so-called “verification” phase, demanding an extra $100 from users with balances below $1,000, and $200 from those with higher amounts, under the guise of helping them recover their funds.
Analysts have described this as a last-ditch effort to extract more money from desperate victims, possibly to pay a few and sustain the illusion of credibility, while the majority are left defrauded,
