This archive report was first published on 17 July 2021.
On July 16, 2021, detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) arrested a 21-year-old fraud suspect who had been operating a high-tech mobile phone scam syndicate.
The suspect, who had been swindling unsuspecting members of the public millions of shillings, was arrested after a joint operation by detectives and Safaricom investigators.
During his arrest, a gunny bag full of SIM cards belonging to Safaricom, Airtel, and Telcom mobile phone service providers was recovered.
The suspect had been using the SIM cards to hack into the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) database and acquire personal details of 61,617 registered voters from a county in western Kenya.
Using the fraudulently acquired personal details, the suspect would then contact different wireless carriers and convince the customer service agents that they were the true owners of the line.
Upon successful SIM swapping, the suspect was granted full access to the victim's online accounts.
The suspect, who is 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.
“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,” said the DCI in a statement.
