This archive report was first published on 17 July 2021.
On Saturday, detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) apprehended a 21-year-old suspect in Juja, Kenya, in connection with a SIM Swap syndicate that has been swindling mobile money users.
The suspect, a former employee of a mobile telecommunications company, was found with a gunny bag containing sim cards and identification cards, which police believe are used to deceive mobile money users.
According to the DCI, the suspect had been using the illegally acquired data to conduct SIM swaps, allowing him to access and steal from online accounts. In one recent incident, the suspect allegedly swindled an MPESA agent of an unspecified amount of money.
The suspect is also accused of hacking into the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) database, where he obtained personal data of 61,167 registered voters from a county in Western Kenya.
“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,” the DCI stated.
The suspect was arrested with the help of Safaricom’s fraud investigations team and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology security officers.
