I wasn't naive about moving countries. I still got scammed twice.
In late 2023, after a run of years that had taken almost everything I'd built, a marriage, the financial stability I'd had before COVID, and a serious car accident I was lucky to walk away from, an admission letter from a university in Berlin felt like a second chance.
Moving abroad itself didn't scare me. I left Nigeria at sixteen for a degree in Malaysia, where I spent the next decade building a life and eventually a business of my own. What I wasn't prepared for was the specific trap that catches almost every international student moving to Germany: you need a place to live before you can even properly start your new life there, and nearly every landlord wants proof of income, a Schufa credit record, or a rental history in Germany, none of which someone flying in from abroad can offer.
I applied to listing after listing. I was rejected again and again, always for the same reason: "you're just a student."
Then I found an ad on Facebook. A "landlord" said he was relocating abroad for a job and needed to rent out his Berlin apartment before he left, but I'd have to pay before he traveled, or lose the place to someone else. He sent me a copy of his ID. We talked for five days. He even offered to arrange for someone to meet me at the airport. I paid €1,700.
"Sorry my friend, no house for you. Your money has been used to enjoy. You've been scammed." A message received while in transit through Turkey, one flight away from Berlin, January 2024.
I landed in Germany with nowhere to go. One night at the airport. A month in a hotel while I started the search over, this time in person.
It didn't get easier. I paid €200 to someone who promised to help me find a place, and a week later, the "opportunity" had mysteriously expired, and I'd need to pay again to keep trying. I found a small room myself, €800 for one month, and paid upfront, only for the real landlord to show up days later and give me one day to leave, because the person who'd rented it to me didn't actually own it. I finally found stability through a friend from university, sharing a room and paying for a shared bed for six months, before I could afford a studio of my own.
Ten years living abroad. A business built and run. I wasn't naive about any of this, and I was still scammed twice, in two different ways, in the same city, within months of each other.
That's when it became clear this wasn't a personal failing. It's a systemic gap. The exact profile scammers target, no local credit history, no local network, under real time pressure to find a home before a term starts, describes hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Germany every year. I built Moyosore so that fewer of them have to learn this the way I did.