Johannesburg, South Africa
On a mild spring evening in Buffalo, Mariam Abdi was idly scrolling through her social media feed when a video gave her pause. The clip, sleekly produced and delivered by a polished presenter, offered a tantalizing promise – a steady, passive income from an electric scooter renting company in fast-growing Asian cities. The pitch was simple; the returns enticing, with daily payouts that seemed tailored for people like Abdi, immigrants working to build new lives thousands of miles from home.
The 48-year-old factory worker had spent years wiring money to her family in Kenya, holding fast to the dream of one day buying them a home. But life in the United States had proved unrelenting. Long shifts on the line, bills that seemed only to grow, and the constant hustle to stay afloat had left her perpetually exhausted, barely keeping up.
The Lightning Shared Scooter Company, or LSSC, promised more than just an investment. She saw it as a chance to join the green transportation wave reshaping cities around the world.
The ad claimed investors could earn anywhere from $30 to nearly $3,900 a day, depending on the tier of commitment. For her, it felt less like speculation than a shortcut to the security she had spent decades chasing. She invested $15,000 – her savings, her future, her family’s hope.
“I did not suspect I would be cheated,” Abdi said in a telephone interview.
Her story was hardly unique. From Minneapolis to Goma, from Buffalo to Kampala, around 50,000 users – according to the company’s own website – made the same calculation. They watched the same videos, joined the same Telegram groups, and funneled their savings, often in cryptocurrency, to a Hong Kong-based company that vowed to transform their financial futures through shared electric scooters.
But according to Robert Williams, a crypto-finance fraud expert, LSSC was less a business than a scheme, a new twist on an old fraud. It dressed itself up in the language of clean energy and modern finance, but at its core, it was “a Ponzi operation” aimed squarely at the African diaspora, one of the world’s most vulnerable yet determined communities.
How the scheme operated
LSSC’s business model appeared straightforward. Investors told Africa Uncensored that they would purchase electric scooters stationed in Asian cities through the company’s proprietary app. These scooters would then be rented out to local users, generating daily passive income. The investment tiers ranged from $960 to $125,000, according to LSSC’s chart of investment levels.
Every weekday, investors would log into the LSSC app and press “run,” authorizing their scooters to be rented. Their daily earnings would immediately reflect in their account balance. According to victims, the interface was slick, professional, and convincing.
“The app looked so real,” said Annet Mauwa, a nursing assistant in Buffalo who invested $12,000 of her life savings. “Everything seemed legitimate. We could see our money growing every day.”
The scooters, it turned out, did not exist. The rentals were fabricated; the daily earnings were little more than numbers on a screen. Payouts were drawn from the deposits of new investors in the familiar rhythm of a Ponzi scheme.
In June, Africa Uncensored began investigating LSSC after receiving complaints from three investors who had each committed more than $10,000. They reported increasingly aggressive promotions, launched almost every three weeks, pressuring members to reinvest with promises of doubled returns. At the same time, withdrawal delays had raised alarm.
Posing as an undercover investor, the journalist behind this report found out that LSSC actively encouraged investors to recruit immediate family members, friends, and colleagues through word of mouth. It offered lucrative commissions to those who successfully brought in new members.
While the total amount lost remains unclear, experts estimate that the scheme defrauded investors of millions of dollars.
According Francois De Bruin Meyer, a South African attorney specializing in financial fraud, LSSC’s growth strategy relied on a mix of greed and trust. The company dangled aggressive commissions for recruiting new members. 17 percent for anyone who brought in an investor depositing $960, rising to 20 percent for those who secured investments of $125,000. The multi-level structure often turned victims into unwitting accomplices.
In Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Esther Ashukuru first heard about LSSC from a family friend in the United States. After persuading her reluctant husband to invest $10,000 from the sale of their land, she soon became an eager promoter of the platform.
“I convinced my husband to invest money in LSSC, but he was hesitant at first. I continued persuading him until he accepted,” Ashukuru explained via telephone.
The scheme offered periodic “proof” of legitimacy through elaborate prize giveaways. Videos on TikTok and Telegram showed members receiving luxury cars and iPhones. Social media posts suggest at least a dozen vehicles were distributed.
The AI deception
What distinguished LSSC from traditional Ponzi schemes was its sophisticated use of artificial intelligence to manufacture credibility. The company deployed deepfake technology to create videos of prominent figures appearing to endorse their platform.
In one widely circulated video, Sean Spicer, former White House Press Secretary, appears to praise LSSC’s growth and appreciate their support for cancer research. The video, shared across LSSC’s BonChat messaging app and TikTok, looked authentic enough to convince thousands. However, the video appears to have been recorded through Cameo, a platform that offers personalized videos where anyone can send a message for a celebrity to record. He does not appear to know that LSSC is a company, and says, “Apparently that’s a he”.
@kingstone231His Honor Sean Spicer has endorsed LSSC♬ son original – @TexanStone
“When was the last time you saw anyone from the White House use a scooter?” asked Jean-Pierre Murray-Kline, a South African AI expert and digital architect. “It should have been an obvious red flag.”
The scammers did not stop there. They appropriated images of French football star Kylian Mbappé to advertise carnival festivals, posted fabricated photos of food assistance to Congolese refugees, and created an ecosystem of false social proof.
Bilal Kathrada, founder of IT Varsity in South Africa, explained the technical sophistication to Africa Uncensored: “Scammers are using AI because it’s such a convenient tool, particularly to impersonate public figures who have extensive video and audio in the public domain. It’s much easier to train an AI to make a digital twin of that person.”
Inside LSSC’s chat groups, which grew to hundreds of members, some participants began to notice unsettling patterns. Responses arrived almost instantly, in multiple languages, with uncanny precision.
“There was this particular assistant called Mia,” said Aziz Hussein, a California resident, in text messages. “She would respond very fast, giving repetitive messages. She would perfectly post different messages in English, Swahili and French without making mistakes. I believe that one was not human.”
Experts say his suspicion is well-founded.
“Scammers are increasingly using large language models, the same kind of artificial intelligence behind tools like ChatGPT,” said Kathrada. “They connect them to comment sections so that if someone asks a question, the AI analyzes it and delivers the answer the scammers want.”
When withdrawals stopped
For a short time, LSSC permitted withdrawals, a classic Ponzi tactic meant to build confidence. In June, Esther Ashukuru and her husband managed to take out $6,000. Convinced by this apparent proof, they quickly reinvested the money when the company announced a promotion that elevated lower-tier investors to higher income brackets.
Three weeks later, the music stopped.
“The withdrawal was under review for a week,” Ashukuru recounted. “When we consulted our [LSSC] manager François, he advised us to deposit 10 percent of the amount we had invested so we could be verified.”
François, who communicated only through Telegram and Bon-chat, used what appeared to be a fake profile photo and never shared his last name. He told investors that fake accounts and robots had infiltrated the system, and said verification would require an additional payment.
Desperate to recover their investment, Ashukuru convinced her husband to pay the 10 percent. LSSC kept the money and blocked their withdrawals entirely. Her husband, devastated by the loss of their land sale proceeds, asked her to leave their home.
Similar stories emerged across continents. Emanuel, a Congolese migrant in the U.S. who asked to be identified only by his first name because he does not wish for his family to know that he was scammed, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission but held little hope: “I have accepted my fate. My money is gone.”
The scale of loss
With 50,000 registered users, a figure drawn from LSSC’s own website, and investment tiers ranging from $960 to $125,000, conservative estimates place total losses in the tens of millions of dollars.
Victims span the African diaspora – migrants in the United States, Canada, and Europe; citizens in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. The Better Business Bureau reported individual losses ranging from $1,000 to $55,000 in complaints filed on their platform.
Nigerian digital worker Blessing, who joined LSSC in January 2024, spent three months completing assessments and waited another month before receiving any tasks. Six months later, her account was blocked without explanation, with $140 trapped inside.
“I asked them to tell me which rule I violated, but I never heard from them again,” she said.
Regulatory warnings came in waves, each one after thousands had already invested. In June, Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) warned that LSSC was offering crypto asset services without authorization. In July, the Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan (FCAA) issued an alert.
‘‘The FCAA cautions investors and consumers not to send money to companies that are not registered in Saskatchewan, as they may not be legitimate businesses, the statement read.
Late last month, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison also issued a warning to residents not to invest in the scheme.
“Don’t invest in products you’ve never seen,” Ellison warned Minnesota residents. “Most importantly, remember that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
But for Rukundo Sula, a shoe trader in Uganda’s Kabale district who lost $5,000, these warnings came months too late.
“I preferred not to report the matter to the police,” he said via telephone.
Law enforcement has begun investigating, with the Arlington County Police Department in Virginia taking the lead.
“We are actively investigating LSSC,” Officer Kyle Hoffman confirmed via email. “I can’t say specifically how many people have reported their cases.”
The Salinas Police Department in California reported multiple victims losing nearly a quarter million dollars collectively. Sergeant Zach Dunagan told local television that investments ranged from a few hundred to $50,000 per victim.
LSSC’s exclusive use of cryptocurrency for deposits created additional obstacles for recovery.
Williams claims funds can be recovered “100 percent through blockchain forensic and advanced recovery processes,” if victims act quickly and preserve wallet addresses.
But Meyer offered a more sobering assessment.
“International cooperation, extradition treaties, and financial tracing are required, which can make arrests challenging and time-consuming,” he told Africa Uncensored. “Arrests also do not guarantee that funds will be returned, especially if assets have been dissipated, hidden offshore, or converted to untraceable forms like cryptocurrency.”
The aftermath
In mid-August, François announced that LSSC was “under investigation by the Financial Services Bureau” with funds frozen until March 2027, a claim that could not be independently verified.
But the elusive manager was not done. Playing the role of fellow victim, he recommended trapped investors join his new platform, ACE Alliance, collaborating with Crown Cryptocurrency Investments Group (CCG). The new scheme asked for deposits of $350 to receive $150, or $600 to receive $300.
As LSSC continues to pursue new victims with similar tactics, Abdi remains on factory shifts, sending what she can to her family. The dream of buying them a home has slipped further from reach. Her $15,000 investment is gone, along with her trust in online promises.
Abdi warns fellow migrants to be careful of get-rich-quick scams and focus on hard work.
“Northing comes easily, if it’s too good to be true then probably it is,” she said.
Cover image: A sign at an LSSC office opened in the U.S. in July, later shut down after authorities began raising questions. (From LSSC WhatsApp group)
This article was produced in collaboration with Egab.
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