By SCM Staff Writer I Friday, October 03, 2025
LEKKI, Lagos – It’s the ultimate betrayal in the home: the trusted employee you rely on to run your life might just be running a scam that could cost you a fortune.
Reports from the plush estates of Lekki, Lagos, reveal a frightening new trend where the person you call “house help” may be a key player in a lucrative, international counterfeit foreign exchange (forex) racket—a business that is turning domestic staff into secret millionaires.
The elaborate con involves printing near-perfect fake US Dollars, British Pounds Sterling, and other currencies, then substituting them for the genuine article right under the owner’s nose.
The owner’s bank balance remains the same, and the physical cash still appears to be there, but the real money has been spirited away.
The Naive Nanny’s Spy Game
The shocking scale of the operation only came to light when “Lady Quincy,” a resident of a top-tier Lekki estate, hired a new cook. This smooth-talking cook, unknowingly, let his guard down with Quincy’s long-serving nanny, boasting of his dark speciality: cloning ATM cards and swapping real forex for fakes.
The nanny, Blessing immediately told her boss. Quincy quickly orchestrated a genius sting operation, urging her nanny to play along while she secretly recorded every word.
“He called several names of other cooks in the Lekki/Ikoyi/Victoria Island axis who were all part of the racket,” Lady Quincy recounted. “He claimed almost all the cooks and stewards from Cotonou did it and that they had a fake forex printing press at the Seme border,” a key crossing point between Nigeria and Benin.
The Bible Verse Bribe
As the recording continued, the depth of the conspiracy was laid bare: “A lot of cooks called him asking for USD and Pound Sterling too,” Quincy confirmed from the tapes.
The cook started piling on the pressure, urging the nanny to join him and hand over her boss’s original forex. He promised her a cut of the profits, boasting he was already a millionaire with his own house and car, and that she could earn enough to help her parents.
In a bizarre twist, the conman even tried to use scripture to justify his actions, quoting a line from the Bible: “The Kingdom of God sufferet violence, and violent takereth it by force.”
The Sting
Quincy and her nanny set the trap. They got a photo of a $100 bill. The moment the cook saw the image, he was hooked, immediately contacting his associates to bring 1,000 counterfeit bills.
The nanny, following Quincy’s instructions, assured him she would need her “madam” to leave the house before she could get to the bedroom and perform the swap.
She was given precise instructions on how to make the switch without arousing suspicion.
The cook handed over the massive stack of fake cash.
The nanny, with nerves of steel, slipped them straight to Lady Quincy, who was hiding just yards away.
Officers of the Nigeria police were called and the millionaire-in-the-making cook was arrested, bringing an end to his lucrative scam and exposing a high-stakes, domestic crime ring.
