THE FRAUDSTER

 In February 2022, I employed a staff whose resumption was April 2022. He came via a third party recruitment process and I was assured all checks were done after the last round of interviews we had. Well, while everyone is a suspect now, I've been reliably told by the police that it's not uncommon for a lot of them to apply for the same vacancy if your organisation is the target. They just strategically place themselves, build websites and accounts on social media that they take down once their mission to get in is achieved.

He resumed April 2022 and that was the beginning of the issue. I noticed that he was lagging behind work yet he was supposed to have over 5 years experience and I expected he’d hit the ground running even if it was the first week. You know, like take basic initiatives. He was always busy on the system but in his first week, he did not meet his weekly report deadline of Friday despite not having much to do that week. It was a red flag for me and my curiosity heightened.

By the second week, I recalled something he had on his CV and I asked him again about the process and the story was different from the first story and that was amongst other little lies I caught him in afterwards because I started paying close attention after the first lie. In this same week, I got to the office one morning and didn’t meet him there. My other staff told me he said his system became faulty and he took it for repairs. Upon his return, I inquired how a brand new system developed fault in barely two weeks and I wasn’t informed before taking it to computer village when it had a year warranty and he gave excuses of not wanting to look irresponsible.

Third week, I started getting complaints from clients that nobody responds to messages via the WhatsApp line he was handling and how he would be unsure of the information he was giving most times. That made me more curious because I’ve not previously had these type of issues with my least experienced staff. I’ve also put in place communication structures that are very thorough, clear and straightforward. I took the WhatsApp and started having a good feeling of what this was but I’d not understand some conversations and he’d say they preferred to talk on phone so he switched.

Eventually, I put together all the pieces. How could someone with 5 solid years of experience not be adept with his job. How is someone who is always on the computer not productive eventually? Why is he always lying even in instances where he shouldn’t. And why is he always getting screen shots of conversations to send as proof and quite unprofessional? To me it reeked of someone trying hard to be trusted so I decided it’s either he’s a fraud and there’s a probability he never went to school and doesn’t have the core experience as claimed or someone who went to school but lacks the experience. I suspected the school thing strongly after I caught a conversation of him promising to get documents for a client which is against the company’s policy. Finally, why aren’t we making money? No alerts. Most people would think it was too early but I understand my business structure such that I know what areas can consistently bring me money even if other areas don’t do so well.

I took days to run my personal research again without anyones knowledge and I discovered the following shocking evidence;

- The company he claimed to be working for was suddenly no longer on the internet and the so called MD I had seen on LinkedIn was no longer there alongside the colleagues. No website or social media page again.

- I came across recent stories on Nairaland that the company was a fraud and no longer at its site albeit reaping people off of millions. Many of whom were wailing over there.

Armed with this information, I sent his educational credentials to a friend who worked at the university to check and realised the following;

- He never graduated.

- He attended one Semester over 3 years ago and withdrew.

- All documents were fake including ID which I was also able to verify myself.

That night, as soon as I got the feedback, I decided he needed to leave immediately which was just less than three weeks back. I requested for all the company’s materials and records but to my utmost surprise, he had nothing tangible and was even acting a bit more strange and cold and that’s when I started digging further in again. For instance, he said even though he has been sacked, he’s available to help in the next week and kept acting like it was imperative for him to stay a week extra at all cost.

I requested for my company’s records from Google using the Admin Console and discovered the following shocking revelations for his user:

- On his first Monday at the company and the day he officially had access to all our portals, he bypassed his Google login which was monitored to another device that wasn’t even in the company and because I didn’t set a high alert for that or even register the device such that I can monitor what happens on it, I wasn’t alerted.

- On the same day, being his first Monday, he sent an email from the company’s official email address to another email with the instruction - GO AHEAD. This I have also come to learn was a signal that “the job” could begin.

- The following day being Tuesday, I discovered that he denied the official WhatsApp Business access to our Google drive and re-enabled it on another public drive. This was no longer enabled to the company's drive as initially set up to store data for the company and it was masked to steal more information. Because he had bypassed that initial login process without me being alerted, the WhatsApp transition was also easy.

- The company’s retainer and other materials that had detailed information and account details were substituted by him and he would send those on WhatsApp or request to meet clients outside the office sometimes to give them his printed copies. Because he bypassed that WhatsApp, each time I ran a check to ensure everything was okay, I’d only see some messages but that was also something that aroused my suspicion initially because I could be reading the chats and just not understand what it was about. 

- He installed monitoring devices on all my staff systems telling them one of our partners instructed him to do so and I cleared the process and then stole lots of other details and passwords.

- He also used staff ATM cards to buy Gift Cards on Amazon. Luckily, those came back blocked due to wrong input of billing address. Information of cards he got from their systems.

- He installed a software  to clone my email and enable login to my accounts. And not just the company accounts but an official payment portal affiliated with some partners as well.

- He switched most of the company’s communication channels by registering them on the servers as the owner and logged me out of them. All calendars were synched to an email he provided and no new appointments were recorded with us but the email showing was still ours.

After his exit, and while all the investigations were still on, I changed all the passwords. However, I installed an application which synced with my Google Admin Console and realised to my shock that while I was getting login notifications again, that application kept showing that my staff were logged in in locations outside Lagos on several devices not initially registered to our company and that was when we realised that he still had access to the computer and the new passwords.

Well, the issue is with the cyber crime department of the police and being spearheaded by the commissioners daughter who I got introduced to by another friend in the course of this. We are awaiting next steps and final report because there are even fears that they’ve taken loans with the company’s details as I was informed is part of what they do right before they exit the company and disappear even though he’s denying that but further checks have to be done and clients have been urged to report amounts paid so far which some claim were to our company’s account but we have no record of except their proof of payment.

This thing is DEEP. I’ve only given a tip of the iceberg. I’ve lost so much sleep, appetite, and can’t comprehend anything. Why target Start-Ups? I’ve been in shock and like a dream because each day I wake up to realise that instead of an efficient staff, I employed a heartless cyber monster. I’ve lost complete trust and faith in humanity and Nigerians currently.

There’s always a learning curve though and I’m now going to champion this awareness with all I can so others don’t suffer same fate.