US data firm pulls Kled App from Nigeria over massive fraud

Kled AI, a platform that rewards users for uploading photos, videos, and other digital content, has withdrawn its services from Nigeria after detecting what it described as “rampant fraud.”

The company, which was founded in 2025, operates as a human data marketplace, connecting everyday users with artificial intelligence firms in need of high-quality training data.

Kled AI said its decision to exit the Nigerian market followed concerns about the integrity of content being uploaded on the platform, raising questions about verification and trust within its system.

The platform had aimed to create opportunities for users to earn by contributing multimodal data, while helping AI companies access diverse, real-world datasets for training models. However, the fraud issues have forced it to halt operations in the country.

Avi Patel, the 22-year-old founder of the company, said Kled’s app was removed from the Nigerian app store, with the organisation implementing an IP ban on the country after discovering that approximately 95 percent of activities from the region were fraudulent.

The platform, which pays users for contributing data assets, reportedly paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars over four months before the scale of the abuse became unsustainable.

According to the founder, fraudsters submitted black screens, duplicate files, AI-generated images, and mass-produced fake Japanese passports featuring photoshopped Nigerian faces during the Know Your Customer (KYC) verification process.

“We have removed Kled from the Nigerian app store and IP banned the entire region,” Patel said.

“After several months of uploads we found that Nigeria had a ≈95% fraud rate. Instead of real, usable data, users were uploading pictures of black screens, duplicate photos, internet generated images, AI generated images, etc. at an unimaginable scale.

“In comparison, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines have a less than 10% fraud rate across 10x the userbase size.”

Patel hinted that the suspension is temporary, pending the development of more robust detection tools.

Meanwhile, some Nigerians have acknowledged the prevalence of fraud in online schemes such as Kled operations, with others denying widespread knowledge of the app while dismissing the announcement as a publicity stunt.

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