It was back in 2020 that the now sixteen-year-old Nigerian web developer and emerging tech star, John Oseni won a competition but did not receive the promised prize. At that point, he decided to start learning how to code independently, marking his journey into web development. Then, in an intriguing turn of events, in December of this year, people learned that he had been involved in scams.
Oseni’s reputation is currently under scrutiny despite his impressive accomplishments in the tech industry, which include earning millions of dollars from his programming skills and receiving job offers from Italian companies Flywallet and Cryptonite.
Fraudulent claims
The accusations were made public on Wednesday after software developer Ayotomide (@czarify) posted a thread on the X platform. Recounting their work together on a startup initiative, Ayotomide pointed out anomalies in Oseni’s representations, such as claims of having attracted investors and having nearly completed backend development. But it was discovered that the work on the backend was yet to commence.
From showing images of unrelated apps as evidence of development to making lofty promises, Oseni’s actions caused a path of broken trust and crushed dreams, .
But in an effort to cover his tracks, Oseni declined a meeting with Mr. Akinola, the team’s CEO, which heightened suspicions. When it was later revealed that the CEO had been tricked out of almost $40,000, the teenage fraudster’s deceit was exposed. Since then, X has been ablaze with diverse responses to the story.
An anonymous source also recalls Oseni’s compelling promises to complete an e-commerce application in a day, and how that nearly led to him being hired right away. However, the truth was exposed when he attempted to promote an open-source project by passing it off as his own and denying any involvement with its source.
GoFree, a Fintech company where Oseni serves as CTO, says in an official statement that it was in operation well before Oseni joined and that any information circulating about him was based on his prior affiliations.
Stop and verify
Technology serves as one of the biggest enablers of fraud, and ironically, one of the strongest barriers against it. Thanks to the online technological revolution, there are now more avenues for a wide range of scams to be conducted on a large scale. And what happens is that people end up losing a lot of money.
Scams can and often do occur offline, but when interacting virtually, fraudsters can readily conceal their shady activities. Although there is no foolproof method to stop deceptive practices by people such as John Oseni, learning how to verify the claims you receive will help you avoid becoming the next victim of a scammer.