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Claim
A circulating post on Whatsapp claimed that Dangote Cement is giving out Ramadan gifts.
The post which was dispersed with a registration link attached (http://w.herselasticity.cn/dd83flhhfGN8BnwGdW8NWVtbRwteDltHZH8BcXg3OCAYNwQ9RBITPDM_BhUgDhYABWd_Gk8RCAwgMUMiEQteIHwgVQkhTUcJJQ?omvi1681847980031), was being shared across multiple WhatsApp groups with the heading “Dangote Cement Ramadan Gift”.
Image Caption: – A screenshot of the Claim.
About Dangote Cement
Dangote Cement Plc is a Nigerian publicly-traded multinational cement manufacturer headquartered in Lagos. The company is engaged in the manufacture, preparation, import, packaging, and distribution of cement and related products in Nigeria, and has plants or import terminals in nine other African countries.
Dangote Cement is a subsidiary of Dangote Industries, founded in 1981 as a trading business with an initial focus on the importation of bagged cement and other commodities such as rice, sugar, flour, and salt. It is the largest company traded on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. It was founded by Aliko Dangote who is Africa’s richest person, with a net worth of 13.5 Billion USD according to Forbes.
ROUNDCHECK Findings
We found out that a click on the link directs applicants to a lead capture page that shows the Dangote Cement brand logo, a group picture, and an introductory message that reads: –
Full text on landing page: “Congratulations!
Dangote Cement Ramadan gift
Through the questionnaire, you will have a chance to get 100000 Naira .”
Image Caption: -The site lead capture page
Applicants were asked to give responses to four (4) questions which include age and gender before they could access the gift. A successful attempt at each question above brings a verification page that verifies the answers and a congratulatory message that takes the applicant to the next step.
Image Caption: – a congratulatory note on the site.
The next step states that applicants have a chance to win the gift with three attempts to select the correct box with a prize. After making the right selection, the last page of the website conveys a congratulatory note that the Applicant won the amount of 100,000 Naira.
However, the applicants would have to follow some sets of instructions before claiming the prize given.
Applicants are asked to follow instructions that require them to share the link with 5 groups/ 20 Friends on Whatsapp. This pattern is common with all malicious links designed to scam unsuspecting users.
Image Caption: -The final page of the site.
Using Verification Tool
With the aid of Google Lens, we subjected the group picture that was displayed on the website to the verification process.
We found that the picture was taken on the 5th of July, 2022 during an event where the company had announced the commencement of her yearly consumer promo “Bag of Goodies” Spell and win promo at a press conference at Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja.
With the aid of Scamadviser, a website search revealed that the website has only been registered recently and it’s being iframed (iframe is an element that loads another HTML information inside of a webpage) by another website.
Image Caption: – Scamadviser Negative highlights.
A detailed analysis states that the site domain name has only been registered recently. This means that the website is actually quite young and only a few reviews or social media comments are expected to be on the site.
However, the website has a total number of 183 comments of which only 10 comments can be seen (as of the time this report is being reviewed).
We traced the account of some of the commenters to Facebook. We discovered the first commenter Diarra Tomoko has an account on Facebook that identifies his location as New York. Likewise, the second Commenter À Moins Koné has a suspicious Facebook account without any information. The same goes for commenters with suspicious profile names and poor English construction.
We noticed there is no empty box for applicants to make comments on the site.
Looking at the technical evaluation the website is using an iframe or other technology to include content and functionalities located on another website.
Using WHOIS, an online tool to look up information about a domain name or IP address, ROUNDCHECK found oejcfz.cn is the site domain name. The domain “.cn” is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the People’s Republic of China and the site was updated four (4) days ago (as of the time this report was being reviewed).
Image Caption: – WhoIs research result
We did a thorough search on Dangote Group’s official social media accounts and couldn’t find anything relating to the post on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Dangote Cement will not host a Ramadan gift site on a China domain for obvious reasons: China is not a Muslim country and the company is domiciled in Nigeria.
Verdict
The circulating Whatsapp message with the claim that Dangote Cement is giving out a sum of 100,000 naira as Ramadan gift is fake. It is a HOAX created to mislead unsuspecting members of the public.
