Inside the dark world of beauty pageants: How Mr Charles Umege extorts, sexually exploits and blackmails aspiring beauty queens.

Helena Ugochi, is one of hundreds of girls that have taken the pageant dream to heart and though she was not expecting a fairy tale story, the horrors she has experienced on the way is enough to dissuade her forever.

This is her story.

Helena’s nightmare is one Mr Charles Umege, the CEO of the Orient Cartel and Orient Foundation worldwide which she described in a mail sent to us as “a very massive scam of the highest extent”.

Mr Charles allegedly poses as the CEO of Miss Orient Foundation Nigeria, Miss Supermodel Nigeria and Miss Voice of the Voiceless Nigeria.

The con is simple. These three beauty pageants request for camp fees ranging from N15,000-30,000. When the contestants arrived in camp, they were asked to vote for themselves and this vote is done by transfer of money into a bank account owned by the pageantry.

As if extortion isn’t enough, the girls who are lodged in a very poor hotel are secretly invited separately to Mr Charles to his hotel room and he had sex with several of them promising them millions and opportunities to represent Nigeria in foreign competitions.

If Sexual exploitation abuse is not enough, Mr Charles also pimped out some of the contestants to his high society friends to “raise funds” for the pageant or at least that was what he said to Helena and her colleagues.

Then when it was time to actually crown a winner of his fraudulently organized pageant, he requested N30,000 from 20 of the girls discreetly telling them that he will crown them when they paid.

Over 20 of them did pay and only one was eventually crowned, the others were not refunded.

Helena Ugochi reveals that Mr Charles recorded his sexual acts with the girls and used it to blackmail them including her if they try to speak out.

She is one of his numerous victims and had to spend thousands treating STDs she contracted from him.

Miss Ugochi confesses to having suicidal thoughts because of the entire experience.


https://spectrumtimes.com.ng/2019/09/26/inside-the-dark-world-of-nigeria-beauty-pageants/

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