Claim: A Facebook user posits that “Norland investment” is where people can invest and get their money back in 45 minutes.
Verdict: FALSE. According to the Norland Industrial Group website, it does not operate a Ponzi scheme.
Full Text
Ponzi schemes are not new, but different methods and tactics are used to get what they want from people. The goal of these kinds of schemes remains to dupe people and run with their money.
Every day, we hear or see new stories of people getting scammed, but one thing is always unique about the stories; “get your money back in one hour.”
Different Facebook pages are now advertising for a “Norland Investment” scheme.
A Facebook page named BBC Nigeria News posted a video of a woman telling people about a thriving network marketing known as Norland Industrial group that has been helping people make money.
In the almost 2-minute video, different celebrities praised the scheme and encouraged people to join to experience the good part of the investment.
One man even shared how he left his job as a civil engineer to join Norland Investment because he got paid more than his salary in two weeks.
This Facebook post has garnered 182 likes,169 comments and seven shares since it was shared on June 28, 2023.
The sensitive nature of this post, its virality and the integrity of the group mentioned made us at DUBAWA investigate the claim.
Verification
We checked the handle of the Facebook post to see if it is the verified page of The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and saw that they were impersonating the original page.
BBC has only one Nigerian page named The BBC News Pidgin, and the one purported to belong to BBC Nigeria is fake, with only 27 followers. This was the first red flag.
We analysed the message’s contents, conducted an advanced search on Google, and saw nothing like Norland Investment. The name Norland Investment was not registered under the corporate affairs commission. We only found a registered business name known as Norland Global.
Norland Global is a Multilevel Marketing Business with fast-selling Norland Supplements, products, and daily consumables. This means that you get products equivalent to the amount invested.
We checked online and saw that Norland Global had released a statement on January 7, 2022, stating expressively that they do not run a Ponzi scheme.
They stated that a man had called them to ask if they knew about the scheme because someone had cajoled him to transfer #50,000 to him, promising to double it in an hour.
We also discovered that the video shown in the Facebook post was taken from a series done on YouTube by the Norland Industrial Group.
Conclusion
We discovered that Norland Group exists but is not an investment platform. The video used on Facebook was taken from an official video of Norland Global.