In February of 2023, the UK media was a buzz with news that a Nigerian billionaire was about to pay 90 million pounds to acquire the professional football team. Sheffield United With football being the most popular sport in Britain Sheffield United is beloved both in its home City and has fans across the country. The Nigerian billionaire in question was a man by the name of Doy MAOI. Up until recently, very few people in the West had ever heard of him and to this day very few people in Nigeria have ever heard of him.

Doy founded a company called Tingo Mobile, which claims to be one of the largest fintech and mobile phone companies in Nigeria. It went public on the NASDAQ in December of 2022 through a reverse merger and at its peak reached a valuation of over $1 billion. The company claimed it was revolutionizing the agricultural industry in Nigeria helping Farmers to access an efficient online payment Network and selling their produce through Tingo Online Marketplace. They had signed up over over 9 million Farmers across Nigeria and Ghana and were generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

But in November of 2023, the SEC suspended trading in Tingo shares and soon thereafter charged Doie with committing Securities fraud on a massive scale. According to the SEC Tingo, business operations were almost entirely fake. Instead of having 9 million customers, they had almost zero and when they claimed to have over $60 million in their bank account, they had less than 2,000 in this video, We'll take a deep dive into how Doy Mozi was able to turn a non-existent House of Cards into a$1 billion NASDAQ listed company supposedly Doy MAOI Founded Tingo in 2001. The business model was initially simple.

They purchased cell phones and lent them to Farmers in Nigeria Many farmers at the time had very low incomes and couldn't afford to buy a phone outright. The leasing model was far more affordable and accessible later. Tingo also created an online Marketplace which can be accessed through the smartphones. The platform connects Farmers with purchasers of their crop as well as sellers of fertilizers and other supplies.

It's kind of like Facebook Marketplace for Farmers By 2019, Doy and Tingo Mobile had leased cell phones to 9 million Farmers across Nigeria and was generating hundreds of millions of dollars of annual revenue. Do's next goal was to list Tingo on a major US Stock Exchange This would give the company International recognition and make it far easier for the company to raise capital and fund future growth in November of 2020. Dosey Applied to list Tingo Mobile on the New York Stock Exchange through a direct listing. The application was denied.

so in July of 2021, Doy instead sold Tingo Mobile to an OTC listed company called Iweb through an all stock merger. Prior to the acquisition Iweb was based in Thailand. Its original business was selling software to the Thai government and corporate customers. in Thailand this business was a failure so they wound it down.

If Iweb wanted to keep their company afloat, they would need to acquire a new business. So they agreed to acquire Tingo Mobile for a $3.7 billion valuation. It's important to note that this acquisition was paid entirely in Iweb stock. Iweb didn't have significant operations, so the value of the company was arguably close to zero.

Given the low trading volume in the stock, the $3.7 billion was only on paper, there was no way to realize it. Following the acquisition, Iweb changed its name to Tingo Inc and Doy became the CEO due to the fact that it didn't trade on a major Stock Exchange Its trading volume was low. If Doy wanted to cash out, he needed to get Tingo listed on a major Stock Exchange in October of 2021. Just months after the acquisition and name change, Tingo Inc applied to uplist Tingo Inc from the over-the-counter markets to the New York Stock Exchange.

The application was not approved. The process for getting onto a major US exchange is very onerous with market cap, share price, liquidity, corporate governance, and auditing requirements. At the time, Tingo Inc was too small to accomplish this, so instead of knocking on the front door, Doy decides to come through the side window in December of 2022. Tingo Inc Sold the Tingo Mobile operating company to a NASDAQ listed company called MCT MCT was a micro cap Insurance Brokerage and wealth management company operating in China Following the acquisition of Tingo Mobile.

MCT changed its name to Tingo Group. Just like the Iweb acquisition, this was an all stock merger. Tingo Inc Holding shareholders of which Doy was the largest, would own 75% of the combined entity. Doy also became the co-ceo of the combined company.

So why would a Chinese Insurance Brokerage buy a Nigerian cell phone? Leasing Company It doesn't seem to make any sense. Regardless of the questionable strategic rationale, the acquisition seemed to be a huge financial success. In the first 9 months of 2023, the combined company generated $2.4 billion of Revenue and $300 million of net income. The vast majority of this came from Tingo Mobile.

In their investor presentation, the combined company repeatedly emphasized that they only acquired Tingo Mobile after conducting extensive due diligence. This can't help but remind me of the famous saying from Shakespeare that the lady doth protest too much. Things got even more interesting in February of 2023, when the company announced that they'd expand into a new industry. they would invest $1 1.6 billion to build a massive food processing plant in Nigeria.

This would be Africa's largest food processing facility. The idea was that they could buy raw food from the millions of farmers already using the Tingo Mobile online Agriculture. Marketplace They would process this food into finished products which could be sold in Nigerian grocery stores. This sounds like a reasonable idea, but as always, the devil is in the details.

Specifically, the Tingo Group would acquire another company called Tingo Foods, which was founded in September of 2022 by no less a person than Doy Mauzi as co-ceo and controlling shareholder of Tingo Group. Doy was effectively overseeing the acquisition of his own company. Despite this apparent conflict of interest, the Tingo Group was getting a steal. Tingo Foods was founded in September of 2022.

In the first four months of its existence, it had already generated $400 million of Revenue. They also had inventory on hand where worth $24 million. The Tingo Group would acquire Tingo Foods for $200 million, the same value of Tingo Foods inventory on hand. Thus, after subtracting the cost of the inventory, they were effectively getting Tingo Foods for free.

By this point, the story is getting a little complicated, so let's do a quick recap. Doy founded Tingo Mobile in 2001. In 2021, it's acquired by a failed Tai tech company called Iweb, which is listen on the over-the-counter markets. In September of 2022, Doy founded an unrelated company called Dingo Food.

UD In December of 2022, a micro cap Chinese insurance company called MCT bought Tingo Mobile from an entity that used to be called Iweb. This is effectively a reverse merger, giving Tingo Mobile and NASDAQ listing. MCT changed its name to the Tingo Group. In February of 2023.

the Tingo Group paid Doy $200 million to acquire Tingo Foods. So Doy founded a food processing business which in its first four months generated $400 million of Revenue, making it perhaps the most successful startup in history. and he sells it to the Tingo Group for the value of his inventory. Why would he do this? Regardless, this deal was massively ACC credit for the Tingo group.

Investors took notice and bid the shares up to $5 per share, briefly, giving the company a market cap in excess of $1 billion. Doy wasted little time in taking advantage of this share price spike Since 2022, Doy spent $226 Million worth of his shares, which he used in part to purchase luxury cars and pay for rides on private jets. With the rise in Tingo share price, Doy became a billionaire on paper. in February of 2023, he decided to make his biggest purchase yet, offering 90 million pound to buy the English football team.

Sheffield United The announcement that Doy would purchase Sheffield United caused a huge stir in the UK Sports Media Sports Journalists immediately got to work trying to find out who this dozy mbozi guy was and whether or not he was serious about buying the team. On February 6 2023 Joey Derso, an investigative journalist for the Athletic Sports magazine published an article sharing some heads scratch. Revelations He found that Doy MAOI was listed as a director of an airline company called Tingo Airlines Tingo Airlines Purported to be worth 1 billion pounds, but there was no evidence that has ever flown an airplane as early as November of 2020. Doy was touting this Tingo Airlines on Facebook speaking about it as if it was already operational Tingo Airlines Also had an Instagram account which posted a picture of what purported to be one of their planes.

The airplane appears to be an Airbus A321 based on the size and shape, but an A32 1 has an emergency door in the middle which the plane in this picture is missing. Shortly after the release of this article, Doy gave an interview on CNN where he addressed the controversy. There was a report in the Athletic that uh, there was no evidence of a tinger Airlines flight ever taking off smile across your face. Do you want to address that? Well, it's uh, I I have to laugh.

You know if I if I wasn't in the studio I would be laughing I saw it yesterday and I laughed. um just before Covid, um I said to my wife that look, um I think it's high time I started putting things together to start this Airline dream I've always had. Um, we started the process. Um, first you incorporate the business, have your visibility studies, and then begin to recruit people.

Um, but Covid happened and um, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know you, you you have plans, you put plans in place and then um, you know you try to Lee aircrafts they begin to delay. Um, you know. So Covid came and I thought to myself, look, I'm finding it difficult to get an AOC here. uh I spoke with Consultants It became impossible.

basically. So what I did was to call. Well, a friend of mine who is a found of Omni Blue Aviation Services in Nigeria and I then decided to invest there. So we set up a joint venture company called Omni Tingo.

Doy was about to launch Tingo Airlines but the disruption of the pandemic caused supply chain issues making it impossible to lease any airplanes. So he ditched the Tingo Airline plan and instead invested in a joint venture with an existing company called Omniblue Aviation Services to create Omni Tingo Omni Blue does appear to be a real company. It offers chartered helicopter flights in Nigeria but I could find no evidence of any joint venture with Tingo Do was posting about Tingo Airlines in November of 2020 well after the pandemic began and of course none of this can explain the Apparently photoshopped picture of the airplane. More importantly, it's hard to verify the existence of Tingo Mobile's Core Business of cell phone Leasing and agricultural Marketplace Tingo claims to have millions of Farmers on its Network yet in the Google Play Store their app only has about 50 downloads.

The deeper we dive, the more suspicious Things become. Starting around 2021, Doy started to appear in various magazine articles that were highly promoted emotional playing up the Revolutionary potential of Tingo Mobile. Most notably was this glowing article in Forbes Africa. As it turns out, this Forbes article and many like it are paid promotions.

Similarly, they posted the video of the famous UK politician Nigel Fage congratulating Tingo for their expansion across. Africa If you watch the video, it's clear that Nigel Farage was just reading off a script and had no idea what Tingo actually does. As it turns out, Tingo commissioned Nigel farage on a website called Cameo where you can pay famous people to record a video video for you. In the case of Nigel Fage the fee was about $90 When Tingo became a publicly traded company, they needs to have a board of directors.

so Doy hired a number of independent directors, one of whom was a man named Kristoff Charlier who Doy appointed to be co-chairman of the board according to his LinkedIn he lives in Paris France It appears that most if not all of the independent board members were located outside of Nigeria they were working remotely. One of the main jobs of the board of directors is to monitor the operations and corporate governance of the company to make sure that everything is above board. Basically, they're there to prevent fraud or malfeasance on the part of the senior management team, but Doy was very secretive. Despite repeated requests from the board, Doy refused to give even basic information such as a list of employees or access to the company's bank records.

Doy said there was no need for the board to have access to this information and they should instead rely on the company's audited financial statements in April of 20123 Kristoff Charlier finally had enough. He resigned from his position and sent a letter to the company. He said that while he had tried to implement corporate governance practices, there was a total lack of communication and teamwork from Doy and other members of the senior management team. As such, it was impossible for him to do his job.

Tingo Financial statements showed that the company was generating billions of dollars of Revenue and hundreds of millions of dollars of profits. These financial statements were audited by an affiliate of the Big four accounting firm Deoy, which gave them a clean bill of health. As it turns out, Doy had been tricking the Auditors all along and it was surprisingly easy to do. He sent Deoy forged Bank statements, for example, for 2021, The bank statement sent to Deoe showed the equivalent of $450 million of deposits, $400 million of withdrawals, and an ending balance of $60 million.

These large numbers were consistent with the company's reported Revenue During the period. The real bank statement showed $300,000 of deposits, roughly the same amount of withdrawals, and an ending balance equivalent to about $2,000 The real amount of transactions in the bank account was a tiny fraction of 1% of the values on the forge statement. Basically, everything was fake. They didn't have millions of customers.

in fact, it's unclear if they ever had any customers at all. To be fair to the Auditors, they didn't just take the bank statements they received from Dozy at face value. They wanted to verify some of the large transactions with Tingo customers and suppliers. One of Tingo Mobile's largest expenses should have been smartphones.

They needed to purchase millions of smartphones, which they would in turn leas to their 9 million customers according to the bank statements. stron to deoy Tingo cumulatively paid $1.5 billion to a company called Ugc Technologies China which supplied the phones Tino's Auditors wanted to contact Ugc directly to confirm these smartphone orders. Doy or's Associates told the Auditors that they could contact Ugc via email. the Auditors emailed Ugc.

Technologies A representative of Ugc promptly confirmed that they were indeed a supplier to Tingo Mobile. However, as it turned out, Doy and his associates purchased the domain to the at Ugc Technology email address. So when autors thought they were emailing Ugc, they were actually emailing Dozy. The bank statements showing payments to Ugc Technologies China were photoshopped.

Ugc Technologies simply didn't exist. Most of the end customers came through deals Tingo had struck with Nigerian farming cooperatives specifically the Ilog Royal Farmers Multi-purpose Cooperative and the Kbi Multi-purpose Cooperative Society both of which supposedly had millions of members who leased cell phones from. Tingo Bank statements provided to Tingo Auditors showed over $1 billion of cumulative revenue from these two cooperatives. The Kbi Multi-purpose Cooper operative Society is located in the Nigerian state of Kbbi Tingo claimed to have 4.5 million customers from this Cooperative but the entire state of Kevy only has a population of 3.2 million people according to the official government website.

As it turns out, the cash received from these cooperatives was forged onto Ting's bank statements with Photoshop Just like with Ugc, Tingo acquired email domains for these fake customers to communicate with the auditor. As you might have already guessed, Tingo Foods was just as fake as Tingo Mobile In their investors's present, they boasted how Tingo Foods had already generated more than $1 billion of Revenue. This is despite the fact that by their own admission, their food plant was still under construction and all they had was a CGI rendering of it. According to the SEC, Doy took advantage of the artificially inflated share price to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of his shares over the past couple years.

Given the fact that the business didn't really exist, anyone unfortunate enough to have bought its shares is now stuck with the useless piece of paper. He used this money to buy luxury sports cars and rides on private jets. It is believed that he doesn't even live in Nigeria anymore he currently resides in London The stock has been halted since November pending an SEC investigation. In addition, Doy himself was charged with Securities fraud and faces a maximum of 45 years in prison.

It is unclear whether or not he has been apprehended. One of the most surprising aspects of this case is the brazenness of the fraud. Doy invented out of thin air a business that supposedly did billions of dollars of Revenue Just by making some fake bank account St Ms and fake email domains, Doy was able to completely fool the auditor. One of the contributing factors was the fact that just like the board of Directors, the Auditors were apparently doing their job remotely.

The auditing firm was a Deloit affiliate based in Tel Aviv Israel Tingo was listed in the US its board members were in Europe and its Auditor in Israel. None of these people were physically located in Nigeria where the business supposedly operated. If any of the interested parties actually consulted someone on the ground in Nigeria, this entire Fiasco could have been avoided. Shortly after Doy made his bid for Sheffield United the athletic contacted a Nigerian Sports journalist to ask his opinion.

The journalist said he didn't take it seriously and asked the rhetorical question: who is DOI Maosi if Tingo really had 9 million customers in Nigeria Almost everyone in the country would have heard of it and if not, it would be easy to find some evidence of its existence either by asking around or searching online. This Nigerian Sports Journalists knew nothing about Tingo Mobile or the supposed billionaire Doy Mauzi. He thus immediately knew that Doy was not to be taken seriously. This situation reminds me a lot of another company we covered on this channel.

More than 2 years ago, a company called Akzo went public merging with a spa it claimed to be based in Greece and operated a music streaming service in South America and Southeast Asia. The company was completely fake and basically didn't exist. Within a year of the Spack transaction, the company delisted from the NASDAQ and investors lost everything. Stocks listed on major US exchanges primarily Target Us investors.

Thus, the easiest way to commit a fraud is to claim your company is hugely successful in some country on the other side of the world. Very few investors have the resources or desire to travel all the way to that country to confirm that everything is legit. while investing in Fara away countries may seem like an attractive proposition. The cases of Tingo Akazu and countless other examples show the risks of putting your money where you can't see it.

All right guys, that wraps it up for this video. What do you think about Tingo Mobile? Let us know in the comment section below. As always, thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one. Wall Street Millennial Signing out.

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