By Gbadegesin Adeyanju
Claim
Multiple social media users are making claims (here, here, and here) that Nirsal Microfinance Bank (NMFB )has opened a portal for the application of a new household grant, which is worth 100,000.
The claim stated that the grant is to finance the needs of Nigerians. Same claim was found on WhatsApp and a link to a website was attached.
We checked the authenticity of the link.
Screenshots of the claim.
About NMFB?
Nirsal Microfinance Bank is a financial institution in Nigeria, and was incorporated in 2019, and licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria the same year, to carry out specialized banking services. It is an intervention bank that on-lends special funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria to qualified citizens.
NMFB is a National Microfinance Bank with 115 branches in all the states across Nigeria with its headquarters in Abuja.
ROUNDCHECK Findings
To check the authenticity of the claim, we visited the website attached to the claim.
The link was directed to a webpage to register, but one could click on the apply button without entering any information. After the whole process, the page was redirected to another website where users are expected to enter bank details.
Again, clicking on “bank details” redirected me to yet another different website with blog posts.
ROUNDCHECK did a quick research with “scam adviser” and “whois” (tools used in verifying information webpages) about the website.
During the search, we observed that the identity of the owner is hidden, the registrar of the website is popular amongst scammers, and the website looks to be hosted by a shady service provider.
According to the Scamadviser, the trust score of the website is one percent, which is very low to be trusted.
ROUNDCHECK visited the official website of the bank and social media pages but didn’t find any information related to the claim. It was also observed that the bank has flagged the claim as SCAM on their Facebook page.
Few weeks after these findings, we observed that the link to the website became unreachable. An indication that the website is fake.
Verdict
The claim that Nirsal Microfinance Bank (NMFB) has opened a portal for the application of new Household Grant of N100,000 to finance Nigerians’ needs is not authentic. It is a HOAX created to steal unsuspecting users’ information.
