A fraud suspect believed to have been operating a high-tech mobile phone scam syndicate was today morning arrested and a gunny bag full of SIM cards belonging to Safaricom, Airtel &Telcom mobile service providers, recovered.
His arrest followed a joint operation by detectives and investigators from Safaricom, after the suspect swindled an MPESA agent, an unspecified amount of money. The fraudster masquerading as an M-PESA customer care attendant, called the agent and lured her into dialing some unspecified codes.
Before the agent realized that she was in a phony call, she had already lost cash from her money lending account. The money was sent to an MPESA account belonging to one of the fraudulently acquired SIM cards, before being transferred to an account at Cooperative bank.
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Kiprop and his accomplices who escaped our dragnet narrowly, is believed to have swindled unsuspecting members of the public millions of shillings through this pretentious scheme. Earlier, the suspect had hacked into the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) database, and acquired personal details of 61,617registered voters from a county in western Kenya.
The data, which was found in his possession, contains names of registered voters, their ID numbers and dates of birth. Using the fraudulently acquired personal details, the suspects then contact different wireless carriers and convinces the customer service agents that they are the true owners of the line. Upon successful SIM swapping, the suspects are then granted full access to the victim’s online accounts.
The 21-year-old believed to have previously worked for one of Kenya’s mobile phone networks, was arrested in Juja by sleuths from Crime Research and Intelligence Bureau, supported by Safaricom’s fraud investigations team and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology security officers.
