Police detectives have arrested a 23-year fraudster suspected to have been behind a high-tech mobile phone scam syndicate.

The suspect was arrested in Juja after a joint sting by detectives from Crime Research and Intelligence Bureau, Safaricom’s fraud investigations team and the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology security officers responded to an incident where the suspect swindled an M-PESA agent an unknown amount of money. 

PHOTO/COURTESY

The suspect identified as Kiprop in conjunction with other accomplices who managed to evade the police dragnet is believed to have already swindled members of the public of millions of shillings by fraudulent means.

Police say the suspect called the M-PESA agent under the guise of an M-PESA customer care representative and asked her to dial a string of unique codes on her M-PESA phone.

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Little did the lady know that she had been hit by a fraudster and she lost all her money from the money lending account.

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The money siphoned from the agent’s account was relayed to another phone number whose SIM card is believed to have been fraudulently obtained by the suspect before being transferred again to a Cooperative Bank account.

The suspect and his team of crooks are also believed to have hacked the Independent Boundaries and Electoral Commission’s (IEBC) database and retrieved 61,617 personal details from the voter’s register of a county in the Western Kenya region.

Data containing names of registered voters, ID numbers and dates of birth were found in possession of Kiprop.

Police also recovered a sackful of Safaricom, Airtel and Telcom SIM cards from him.

PHOTO/COURTESY

It seems Kip and his team use the information from the voter register to call mobile phone providers’ customer care units posing as the rightful owners of the lines to initiate SIM swaps that enable them to perform transactions with the victims’ lines

The young fraudster is believed to have worked with a mobile service provider in the country, hence his expertise.