After what has appeared to many as a heist in which customers lost a whopping over two million dollars, Fejiro Hanu Agbodje the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Patricia Crypto Company is now on the run.
ENigeria Newspaper reports that Patricia Crypto under the watch of Fejiro Hanu Agbodje first froze withdrawals for users of the platform, alleging a breach that saw the company losing an undisclosed amount of money, according to its initial communication.
Patricia reluctantly bowed to pressure and accepted that the company’s retail crypto trading platform was compromised. This is after it had initially dismissed the report apparently in a frantic effort to assuage the fear of many of its customers.
While it appeared that cyber criminals or Yahoo boys as they are popularly known in Nigeria, siphoned over two million dollars of customers’ funds from Patricia crypto’s retail trading platform, some insiders who spoke to ENigeria Newspaper exclusively, hold the strong view that it was an insider job and for which Fejiro Hanu Agbodje should be held responsible.
In its communication to the public after the hack, Patricia said its Bitcoin and naira assets had been compromised and told customers that it had lost an undisclosed sum. However, it failed to share the date of the incident, but TechCabal revealed in a report that the breach happened in January 2022 and cost the company $2 million.
As at the time of filing this report, Patricia has yet again announced that following the hack of its platform, the company has now decided to convert all current outstanding BTC and naira balances to its token.
Invariably, this means that the retail trading app Patricia has converted the BTC and other tokens their customers own to its Patricia Token (PTK) token.
In its post on Friday announcing the crypto company’s new app, Patricia Plus, described PTK as a stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar, with 1PTK equal to $1. Yet the big question Patricia’s customers have is if they will finally have access to their funds.
In May, Patricia froze withdrawals for users of its platform after sharing that it was the victim of a breach.
What An Expert Said About The return of Patricia Plus
Ironically, the Patricia Plus app launch in April triggered what closely resembled a bank run. While customers had withdrawal restrictions on the old app, the new app had no such restrictions, and many customers quickly tried to move their funds. Like most bank runs, the retail trading app did not have immediate liquidity to meet those needs.
Many customers have been unable to access their funds since April 2023, and the decision to convert customer assets to the company’s stablecoin is an attempt to solve the problem. Yet the move raises many questions, and it is doubtful that this will let customers access their funds.
A crypto expert who asked to be identified by his X handle @samlogic_, told TechCabal, “Their monies will be a worthless token printed out of mid-air. I think the funds are long gone; Patricia has misappropriated customer assets just like FTX.”
By failing to keep its customer’s assets safe–the primary duty of a centralized exchange–Patricia fell victim to a breach that has now put it in a place where it will struggle to return its customer’s assets. Its workaround to that problem is to unilaterally convert its customer assets to stablecoins, rightly raising questions of legality.
The most likely scenario is that customers who immediately have access to Patricia tokens will quickly attempt to sell the assets to get their monies back. That market frenzy may cause the stablecoin to depeg and return customers right where they started. TechCabal attempted to get comments from Patricia, but there was no response at the time of this report.
Fejiro Hanu Agbodje On The Run
The Patricia founder is now said to be on the run. This is coming after a photo showing an entry point to the United States of America which he posted in October 2022 re-emerged. The photo piqued the interest of investigative journalist, David Hundeyin who in his reaction indicated that the supposed Crypto expert is now on the run.
