Nigerians grapple with CBEX losses

On April 15, the internet was abuzz with news of Ponzi platform CBEX that claimed to double investors’ money in 30 days through an AI-powered trading bot. CBEX lured investors with promises of great returns and “no trading skills or experience” required. 

However, it has been an elaborate scheme in the making. CBEX, or “CryptoBridge eXchange,” an exchange platform that reportedly had claims to Chinese origins, has long been in partnership with crypto trading group Super Technology (ST) Team. 

Super Technology Team had reportedly been operating in physical offices in Nigeria—under the brand, “Smart Treasure Operation Centre”—including one recently opened in Ibadan and Lagos. TechCabal could not verify the extent of its ties to Super Technology, but CBEX marketed its platform on the technology that Super Technology supposedly provided.

While the CBEX website is still active at the time of this report, Super Technology has deleted traces of its internet presence, including its social media platforms.

The promise of trading with AI was false because both CBEX and Super Technology had no real product, and in the unlikely case that they did, both companies had no history of operating a crypto trading business before late 2024. 

This was the first red flag from CBEX. Additionally, the platform has used multiple domain names since it started operating, including www.cbex9.com, www.cbex39.com, www.cbex38.com, www.cbex18.com, www.cbex1.com, and www.cbex.vip. All of them, except www.cbex9.com, are now inactive, likely due to reports of illegal trading activities. Currently, CBEX remains operative under https://cbex.cx.

“The domain [cbex1.com] is tied to the same CBEX crypto scheme that crashed in Nigeria,” said Kassy Olisakwe, a senior blockchain developer and founder of AuroraWeb3. “They’re just using that domain name as a spare, they registered it in early March. They’ve been hopping between multiple domains to avoid getting blacklisted or caught.”

USDT “bullion” wallets

CBEX operates a highly elaborate scheme, combining multi-level marketing (MLM) with Ponzi techniques. Once a user registers on the platform, it asks them to invite others, known as “downlines”. However, whether they keep the referral loop spinning or not, users earn from compounded returns. 

A user who “invested” $100 in July 2024—the reported month CBEX became active—will have $25,600 in their account by March 2025, an oversized increase that even some legitimate fast-growing assets, like gold, are unable to match in the same period.

When a user creates an account on CBEX, the platform assigns a USDT or Ethereum wallet where they deposit their funds. Shortly after, the platform moves the funds from the deposit wallets to intermediate wallet addresses that carry the money to other accounts.

Through some digging, TechCabal traced some of these intermediate wallets to a CBEX-linked website:

• TLFZVNxiHkfcUQdzN1DJCjHegFQQ368888
• TFo7GZvgdUU5gj41irQeH3NDR5FYWPssFQ
• THn25XKVoBXGSaFfYa6o9pU9Hf4sgtZNZM
• TKadxGap9adtWVztGkRfdvnAgb4JFopXxX

We found those addresses on the website, www.cbex1.com, which, still active, contains USDT transaction records linked to CBEX. To verify the transaction trails, we used public blockchain explorer tools like Tronscan and Tokenview, which allow anyone to check wallet activity on the blockchain.

TechCabal was unable to verify if the records showed the total live transactions being processed on the platform.

At the time of this report, $145,266 has been moved from its main accounts—random USDT deposit addresses that CBEX generates for its users to deposit money—to its intermediate accounts. About $120,829 has been moved to other accounts.

“Those transactions are from an API call they’re making to api.hv2365.com and they control it. They built their backend and database to disappear quickly. Because they’re using anonymous services, we can’t get the exact information of the people that registered CBEX. Even on plain whiteweb name searches, it comes back as ‘(namecheap)’,” said Olisakwe.

It is also likely that these amounts were more, and the transfer records on the website do not tell the full story.

TechCabal investigated further. We traced how the money flowed immediately when a user deposited money on the platform.

One of CBEX’s victims, who identified only as ‘Earth Laureate’ on Telegram, told TechCabal that she deposited $2,600 on CBEX on April 2, 2025, only days before the platform froze withdrawals.

She deposited the sum from a Bybit wallet into the address, TC7nTFpBHp9j81521m5n76D6wsD4suUXrH, a TRON (TRC-20) blockchain address which holds the USDT stablecoin.

After three hours, the funds were siphoned to another address, TB6pGj8FiR3XbXbE1th4cVHzASs8xXVL4p, one of the multiple intermediate addresses—likely a level-1 address. At the time of this report, this intermediate address held no USDT; however, it had received $64,591,317 USDT tokens (where 1 USDT = $1), and had sent out the exact amount of tokens.

Upon further checks, the level-1 intermediate address frequently sent funds to a Bridgers cross-chain bridge address, TPwezUWpEGmFBENNWJHwXHRG1D2NCEEt5s, which held $422,241 USDT tokens at the time of this report.

A bridge cross-chain account is used to move crypto assets between two different blockchains, like moving money from a bank in one country to a bank in another.

From this bridge account, the funds are further obfuscated into different accounts and blockchains. Smaller amounts like $10,000 and lesser are then transferred into layer-2, layer-3, and layer-4 addresses to hide the origin of the money. This is known as “smurfing.”

TechCabal examined another case of a CBEX user who managed to withdraw their money from the platform. The person, who asked not to be named, shared that they received $2,619.15 in USDT payment from the address, TY5yKqWoXRVaHYKNNkY2rf1UjkrLDF6323, on April 1, 2025. 

We traced the source of the funds used to pay the user to the address, TASdnkGdYsRxncjmJBUwKym7BDBFvLsyHM, which held $0.883212 USDT at the time of this report. Over $33 million USDT tokens have been moved from this wallet to different destinations.

Given the dizzying level of smurfing that was done, it is a little difficult to pin how much Nigerians exactly lost to the Ponzi scheme, however, this is believed to be in the region of millions of US dollars.

CBEX claims to have started operations as far back as 2019, with some sources saying the scam evolved over time, taking on different forms with ties to Belize, Canada, and China. While there was no compelling evidence for this, it is likely that the platform received funds from several locations, making it a multi-national operation—since it allowed users to manage accounts from anywhere in the world. 

CBEX operated with a web application that could be downloaded as an Android Package Kit (APK) file, raising more concerns on why it couldn’t list its app on legitimate mobile app stores. Still, given its strong focus on Nigerian users and the lack of evidence of its presence elsewhere, it’s possible that this was primarily a local scheme.

Applying cosmetic to pass as a “trading” platform

Historically, Ponzi schemes try to hard-sell lurking investors on trust. It shows potential inventors “proof” of its business, fake dashboards and business performance numbers, and the extreme cases, like CBEX, set up “offices.”

Additionally, the Ponzi scheme also claims to be a certified money services business (MSB), a compulsory registration by the US Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) for businesses that deal with currency exchange. We found this claim to be true, with the business registered under the name, CryptoBridge eXchange. It received its licence in September 2023.

However, this doesn’t make CBEX a legitimate platform. The MSB licence simply means that CBEX has self-reported that it conducts money services and has filed necessary paperwork. It is neither a certificate of legitimacy nor a recommendation by FinCEN. CBEX will need more than that to verify its status as a legitimate business.

One of its so-called Nigerian company representatives also told TechCabal that CBEX, through Super Technology, was registered with the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering website (SCUML), the initiative of the country’s anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to apprehend money laundering operators. 

However, our checks showed the organisation, allegedly registered with code, “SC251514550” was not on the SCUML portal. The representative claimed the EFCC deleted it after the ructions online began.

Per Punch, the EFCC has stated it will work with US’ INTERPOL to trace CBEX’s operations.

Since CBEX was ousted as a Ponzi scheme, it has uploaded images of more “certifications” from the US’ Colorado government on its website, in desperate hopes of making Nigerians ditch the reports and deposit more money.

Upon further checks by TechCabal, the named founder in one of its certificates, Tristan Soreau, didn’t return any significant proof of CBEX’s ownership. This means the platform is operated by a faceless entity, another classic Ponzi scheme playbook.

Where Nigerians got it all wrong 

While the operators of the CBEX platform remain elusive, TechCabal found a now-deleted claim on Super Technology’s platform—CBEX’s partner—that the website had over 50,000 users in November 2024, with that number likely to have increased. 

Many Nigerians shuffled onto the platform, convinced by their friends, relatives, and acquaintances, that they’ll make money. Some of them did; others got the short end of the stick.

Earth Laureate, who deposited $2,600 on April 2, had a balance of $9,247.12 in her account before withdrawals on CBEX were frozen. She said she accumulated the sum from referring her friends to the platform and was waiting for her balance to reach $10,000 before withdrawing it.

“Idle mind is truly the devil’s workshop,” she said. “It was idleness during the Eid break that made me join CBEX. They told me about it in September last year, but I wasn’t keen until I finally joined in April.”

Her “upline,” the person who invited her to CBEX, invested $22,000 into the Ponzi scheme. Although the person declined to speak in detail about the matter, he was devastated.

“I’m in a low place,” he said in a text message. “I just want to recover my $22K.”

Another person claimed he lost $81,000 to CBEX, and others said they lost money they set aside for different purposes.

There are more Nigerians like them who had hoped that CBEX was the dream platform for them to make money—but all hopes have been dashed. In one of CBEX’s engagement groups on Telegram, admins, who acted as the link between the platform and regular investors have claimed to have no knowledge of CBEX’s businesses.

“We never saw any of the executives of ST or CBEX,” said one of the admins or said ‘representatives.’ “They knew we just wanted to be happy and make money, so they always told us to go ahead. I’m not sure anybody tried to find out who these guys were.”

After days of inactivity, the representative claimed that CBEX became responsive on April 16, hinting that the platform says it is waiting for the wallet where Nigerians made additional $100 and $200 deposits to “recover” their money to become active. Some Telegram channels have regrouped these unwitting investors, asking them to pay more money to “verify their accounts” with CBEX and get their compensation.

On a broader scale, Nigerians who participated in the CBEX Ponzi scheme, believed to be at least in the tens of thousands, fumbled the ball. There were clear signs that the platform was not legitimate.

Crypto trading is a highly volatile business; promising a linear two-times return on investment in 30 days should have sent warning bells. The volatility of the market also makes this unpredictable. Additionally, its processes were shady; CBEX failed to educate investors about how it made money.

On its still-active website, it provided a “Futures” tab that allows users to trade the BTC/USDT pair to increase their income. The feature has “Call” and “Put” options with varying percentages of success. With the funds in their wallets, users can gamble by selecting the pair, betting against the price of Bitcoin against the US dollar.

Essentially, CBEX fronted—and had similar operations—as a crypto trading platform, with the website intricately built to deceive and fleece its victims. It was well-thought-out and elaborate. Yet, the ultimate red flag: it was not registered by Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 

As it claims to offer crypto trading services, it should have been registered with the SEC. However, it failed to, sounding even more warning bells.

In a public notice issued by the regulator on April 17, it stated that “neither CBEX nor its affiliates were granted registration by the Commission at any time to operate as a digital assets exchange, solicit investment from the public, or perform any other function within the Nigerian capital market.”

The SEC said it will take “appropriate enforcement action” against CBEX, its affiliates, and promoters.

The opportunity for education 

The CBEX case resurfaces a critical issue about the low level of crypto and FX education among Nigerians. The country may be one of the crypto-native nations in the globe, yet that knowledge is concentrated among a few people.

Nigerians need more education and regulators need more action to prevent illegal platforms like CBEX from thriving. Dr. Emomotimi Agama, the SEC Director General has made the commission’s plans to regulate the forex trading space known.

“The regulation of online forex trading platforms is conspicuous in the new Investments and Securities Act,” said Agama. “This has been left unattended for a long time and a lot of Nigerians have suffered great losses on the back of this not being regulated.”

With its full oversight on crypto exchanges, the commission has called for patience among stakeholders as it rolls out regulatory guidelines to enforce compliance.

Yet, for Nigerians, there’s only one lesson: if it looks, smells, walks, and talks like a Ponzi, it is likely a Ponzi.