Nigerian Crypto Wallet Platform Absconds With $1 Million in Alleged Exit Scam

A cryptocurrency wallet based in Nigeria has just made away with about $1 million worth of funds, in an alleged exit scam. The company, Satowallet, however still insists that the problems with the platform were due to several technical errors which prevented its customers from having access to its funds.

According to several reports, trouble began a few months ago back in April when customers began to complain about their inability to access their funds and Satowallet offering several reasons up till now. Initially, the company first offered the explanation that the problems stemmed from its efforts to unveil SatowalletEX, another crypto exchange platform. The company then blamed unknown Telegram hackers for this problem as well as some stolen funds.

Much later in June, Satowallet announced that the problem had been solved and normal business would resume, only for the company to turn around and say that there were still problems which stemmed from the implementation of new know-your-customer (KYC) procedures. Even after this was done, customers still couldn’t access their funds and Satowallet further announced that it will begin testing manual withdrawals. However, even this didn’t happen as expected and in August, the website became unavailable. The CEO then blamed OVH.com, the company’s data center provider, for the mishap but even when it was eventually restored, users’ funds totaling about $1 million, were nowhere to be found.

Satowallet was founded back in 2017 and is supposedly based in Dubai, UAE. Blockchain Tech Hub, the platform’s parent company, is however based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Satowallet supported at least 60 different currencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC).

Regulation in the cryptocurrency sector is probably now needed more than ever as without proper regulation and guidance from authorities, there might be more occurrences like this with investors left completely out in the cold.

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