Years after his music career took a hit and he relocated from Nigeria, Nigerian musician Lanre Dabiri, fondly known as Eldee, has revealed how he got scammed by an alleged fake venture capitalist, Akintoye Akindele.
Eldee made the revelation in a conversation on Teju Babyface’s King of Talks podcast on Wednesday, August 16.
Eldee, who led Trybe Records, which once boasted of music stars like Sasha, 2shotz, Dr SID, Abounce, Sojay, K9 among others and producers like Sheyman and Sarz, said Sheyman introduced him to Platform Capital boss, Dr. Akintoye Akindele.
He alleged that Akindele’s advisory firm, Synergy Capital, collected money from some investors and lied to him and his team that they were investing the money in his music, while he acted as the face and voice of the brand without the promised injection of funds.
“What they do is to look for businesses to invest in. They have people who fund those portfolios,” he said.
“It was music to my ears hearing about a venture capital company, Synergy Capital, showing a desire to partner with Trybe Records to expand the label’s network.
“The thing for me at the time was ‘Oh, you have this thing going on, you got these artists, you’ve got the music, let’s partner and set up a bigger entertainment entity which was IMAN Entertainment.
“It was somewhere along the lines of the kind of expansion I was looking for so I said: ‘Yea, sure’. I already was making moves to blow up what I was doing a little more so it sounded interesting. They said they would put in so so million dollars, do this, do that blab bla. So I am on the board, unbeknownst to me, as it is said, what essentially was happening was him and his partners at the capital advisory firm, had people who were funding what was supposed to be Iman Entertainment.
“However, Iman Entertainment was not getting money but Eldee, who was the face of Trybe and IMAN, was basically everywhere trying to hold it all together,” he said.
He said that the deal with Akindele and his firm affected his life and strained his relationships with friends and family.
“I had to pay money from my pocket, it affected relationships that I had, I get a little emotional about it now. And that’s because there were people caught in-between. The artists, the staff, the businesses, vendors and more. I kept telling them money would come. I had to dip into my accounts in the United States, dip into my accounts in Nigeria.
“Mr Akindele and his partners kept assuring us. Where you were supposed to get $1million, you get $10,000. It went on until he got into trouble and he went on to float another entity to continue his business,” he said.
Eldee said it took him nine months to realise that he was being scammed and when he did, he backed out of the whole deal.
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